LOVE 

FAITH 

JOY 



BY 

WILLIAM J. McCAUGHAN 

PASTOR OF THE 
THIRD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
CHICAGO 



Chicago 
J. GRAHAM STAATS 

1904 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
tWo Copies Received 
JUN 13 1904 
g Cooyrlfht Entry 

CLASS ^ XXo. No. 
f 3 S rf 
COPY B 



Copyright, 1904 

BY 

WILLIAM J. McCAUGHAN 




HAMMOND PRESS 
W. B. CONKEY COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



TO 

ERIE CHAPEL 

OF THE 

THIRD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
CHICAGO 



CONTENTS 



Page. 



Preface 9 

Foreword 1 1 

Introduction 13 

Love, Faith, and Joy 17 

Faith 39 

Faith of Joseph, The 61 

Weariness 79 

Our Rock 103 

Good News 119 

Man's Want 143 

Idolatry 165 

Gentle Conqueror, The 187 

Good Year, The 207 

Christmas Joy 223 

An Ideal Epitaph 239 

Large-Heartedness 257 

Vale of Tears, The 269 

Hagar's Vision 285 

A Gift Remembered 303 

Prayers 325 

7 



PREFACE 



These sermons have been asked for by 
hearers who had found them useful and de- 
sired to have them in a permanent form. They 
are not the sermons I would have chosen of 
my own accord for publication. I am thank- 
ful that they have helped some men and women 
to find in life some good things of God, and 
pray that in this form they may cheer and 
comfort others. 

Chicago, February, IQ04. 



FOREWORD 

The Reverend John Lindsay Withrow, D. D., 
Old Park Street Church, Boston. 

Live sermons are as good for the soul as live 
wires are to make things move. Some may 
say sermons are too much like an omelet, that 
must be eaten as quick as cooked, else it falls 
flat. But that depends upon who makes the 
sermons in question. Some may be only as 
sillabub, but others as the bread of life that 
cometh down from heaven, in the strength of 
which Israel went many days. This volume 
of sermons from the pulpit of the Third Pres- 
byterian Church may be trusted to serve the 
nobler ends of inspiration, edification, and 
illumination. Pastor McCaughan in his place 
neither wastes time on platitudes nor whimpers 
the mere dreams of men. He knows the vital 
truths of the Gospel, and gives them to those 
who read or hear in full measure. I am glad 
these sermons are to have a full circulation in 
Third Church families, and especially among 
11 



12 



FOREWORD 



those interested in and united with Erie 
Chapel. Could my voice effectually invoke 
still richer and the richest blessings on the 
work and workers in Erie, it should not be 
silent a moment. The fruitful services which 
have been there rendered already are beyond 
calculation precious. My memory of the years 
when about eighteen hundred were in attend- 
ance on Sunday afternoon are blissful mem- 
ories. Better men and women than those 
whom I there labored with never lived, as I 
think. But the best of it all is the persever- 
ance of the saints represented in those pastors 
and people who still sow and reap, some thirty, 
some sixty, and some an hundred fold. Long 
live Erie, its pastor, superintendent, teachers, 
and swarm of pupils! 



INTRODUCTION 



The Reverend Abbot E. Kittredge, D. D., Madison 
Avenue Dutch Reformed Church, New York. 



It is with very great pleasure that I am able 
to express through this introduction my warm 
affection for the pastor of the Third Presby- 
terian Church, and my gratification that those 
outside of his regular congregation are to be 
permitted to read his sermons. 

As the proceeds from the sale of this volume 
are to be devoted to the work in the Erie 
Chapel, this fact of itself is to me one of 
peculiar interest. I well remember the begin- 
nings of that work and the feelings of uncer- 
tainty as to whether the locality we selected 
would prove to be the best for a grand mission 
enterprise, but the results during these many 
years, of steady growth and rich fruit in the 
conversion of souls, have proved that we were 
guided by the Holy Spirit in the selection of 
the place for the mission. Not only has the 
Erie Chapel been a blessing to the neighbor- 
13 



14 



INTRODUCTION 



hood and to hundreds who within its walls 
have been led from darkness into God's mar- 
velous light, but the work has been a great 
blessing to the church which has so generously 
supported it. The Erie Chapel stands to-day 
as a monument to the faithfulness of a cove- 
nant-keeping God in answering the prayers of 
those who organized the movement, and the 
earnest prayers of the members of the Third 
Church from that day to this. 

It is my earnest wish that this volume of 
sermons may be blessed to the spiritual quick- 
ening of all who read them, and that the pros- 
perity of the Erie Mission may be grander in 
the future than in the past. 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



"Christ is the Lord of the earth, 

And the heavens is His domain; 
His smile passes over the sea 

And rippling fields of grain, 
And over the hearts of men, 

In the houses of joy and of pain. 
And who, whether woman or man, 

Or child, or girl, or boy, 
Shall see that form of love 

Which nothing on earth can destroy, 
And not be filled with peace — 

The peace that blossoms in joy?" 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



"Jesus Christ, whom having not seen, ye love; in 
whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye 
rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory." 



The apostle Peter, seeing the difficulties 
under which the church in his day labored, 
wrote a letter for the encouragement of those 
who were somewhat disappointed by the slow- 
ness of its growth and the greatness of the ob- 
stacles it must needs overcome. He makes a 
number of statements that are wonderfully 
comprehensive, and that express an experience 
suitable not only to the Christians of his own 
day and age, but to the Christians of every 
land and of every time. 

The assertion, "Jesus Christ, whom having 
not seen, ye love, "is as true to-day as it was 
in the first century. The connection, how- 
ever, between love and sight is sometimes 
over-emphasized. We forget that we do love 
those whom we have not seen. And those 
2 17 



18 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



whom we loved when we did see them, we love 
more and better now that they are unseen. 
This truth is illustrated by the early disciples. 
They saw Jesus and they loved Him. But 
their love was mixed with selfishness. When 
He became unseen, their love was not less- 
ened but intensified. Men whose affection 
was so superficial they all forsook Him 
and fled at the first approach of danger, 
after He vanished from sight became so fear- 
less in their devotion to His personality that 
no threats of rulers, no terrors of dungeons, 
no lashes and no pain, not even death itself 
could destroy their loyalty or lessen their de- 
votion. We sometimes think that if we could 
see Christ we would admire Him more, 
appreciate Him better, realize the significance 
of His personality and teaching more clearly, 
and be willing to live in accord therewith more 
entirely. But is that conception not alto- 
gether false? We love now without seeing. 
The sense of sight, it is true, has a wonderful 
power over the emotions, yet the great men 
who are reverenced and whose work excites in 
the hearts of the young an admiration and 
enthusiasm we may well call love, are the men 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



19 



of the ages agone, whose bones have crumbled 
to dust long since. They have never been 
seen at all by those who to-day can appreciate 
the greatness of their character and the sub- 
limity of their conduct better than the men 
and women who saw them in the flesh. Moses 
was not understood by his generation. 
Ulysses, the great ideal man of Homer, was 
not appreciated by the poet's age and time. 
Few, if any, of the men who made the 
race what it is to-day were understood by 
their contemporaries. Although they were 
not crucified, they were criticized and de- 
nounced, their purposes thwarted and their 
ideals condemned. Each successive genera- 
tion since their time, growing in knowledge 
and power of appreciation, has been able to 
love these men for what they were and for 
what they did better than the generation in 
which they lived, or than any generation pre- 
ceding. 

There are men who have created enthusiasm 
while they lived. Jesus Christ did not. There 
may have been occasional manifestations of 
zeal by the crowd, but they were ephemeral 
and evanescent. They did not last. We 



20 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



appreciate men who have been able to enforce 
their conception of right upon a majority of 
the people of their age and nation. Many 
men love Cromwell to-day for what he was 
and for w T hat he did, with all the limitations of 
his age and time. Many admire Garibaldi. 
All nations have their heroes. Some of them 
are historical, some of them may be mythical; 
but whether they are historical or mythical, 
they express the national conception of hero- 
ism. We have our Washington. We have 
not seen him. He was opposed and criticized 
by a large minority of the men of his own age 
and race and nation. He was denounced by a 
large majority of the peoples of the civilized 
world. Yet Washington was never loved and 
appreciated so thoroughly and universally as 
in this land and in other lands to-day. Our 
ability to appreciate the character, conduct 
and accomplishments of Washington is greater 
than the ability of any generation since Wash- 
ington died. Though having not seen him, 
we love him and admire him with a loyalty 
and enthusiasm deeper and stronger than 
ever before was rendered to his name and per- 
son. 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



21 



As it is with these great men of the past, so 
it is in a grander sense with the typical man, 
the ideal man, Jesus Christ himself. We 
know Jesus better than our fathers knew Him. 
If we do not we must be stupid indeed. We 
have capacities to appreciate the character of 
Christ that have come to us by birth and train- 
ing such as cmr fathers or their fathers never 
had. Every age that has developed in spirit- 
uality and civilization has advanced in its pow- 
ers of appreciation of what is best and truest 
in Jesus Christ the Lord. Though we do not 
see Him, we love Him more than the men of 
His own age, more than the men of the suc- 
ceeding age, more than the men of the last 
generation. We love Him more because we 
know Him better than ever He was loved 
before or known before in this world of His. 

The loving of the unseen has in it something 
elevating. We are so much slaves of our 
senses they often degrade our ideals and 
bind us to what we can hear, see, touch, taste, 
and smell. Some think the only thing worth 
living for is an ideal that appeals to one or 
other or all of these senses of ours. The love 
for the unseen is one of the great influences 



22 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



that enables us to master the senses, rise above 
them and realize that there must be a life 
where the senses are not the only means of 
communication; a life where they may not be 
needed at all; a life where we shall not be 
limited by the body in our methods of com- 
prehension, our abilities of appreciation, and 
our capacities for affection. 

It was necessary that Jesus Christ should be 
unseen to be loved. If He is to be loved by 
everybody, He must not be a local character. 
While He was seen He was local. He was a 
Jew. The Romans were prejudiced against 
the Jews. The Greeks were prejudiced against 
the Jews. Every nation of that age was preju- 
. diced against the Jews. Every nation to-day 
is prejudiced against the Jews. If Jesus Christ 
could be seen in the flesh as a Jew, His very 
nationality would prevent the success of His 
teaching. It was therefore essential that He 
should become unseen. Relieved as He is 
from the limitation of provincialism, He can 
be loved, not for the wave of His hair, or the 
glance of His eye, or the sweetness of His 
smile, or the expression of His countenance, 
or the correctness of His language, but loved 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



23 



for Himself. The thing in all men that is the 
grandest and the best cannot be seen, never 
is seen. We can only catch in glimpses here 
and there, through looks and words and acts, 
the personality in every man — the thing that is 
the man — which depends not upon its visibility 
for strength and permanence. 

Jesus Christ, to fulfill His mission, must not 
be a man loved only by the people among 
whom He moved in bodily form. If He had 
to be seen to be loved, He must have lived in 
this world forever, the center of attraction and 
the object of devotion to each succeeding 
generation. Therefore, it was necessary He 
should not be seen, because as the universal 
ideal He must be limited to no place or time. 
Each generation could see what it was capable 
of seeing in Him; and as one generation stood 
upon the ashes of another a little higher, see- 
ing a little farther, it could appreciate a little 
better all that was best and purest in His per- 
sonality. Jesus was not the Saviour of any 
one age or of any one place, but the Saviour 
of all races and of all ages, the One who was 
to transcend in the perfection of His love, in 
the sweetness of His character, in the sub- 



24 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



limity of His teaching, all space and all time. 
He was to be the Christ of every where and 
the Christ of every when. He was to be 
the Christ of infinity and the Christ of eter- 
nity. He must be unseen; and unseen He be- 
comes more lovable than any man who could 
be seen by the eye of sense, touched by the 
hand of sense, or heard by the ear of sense. 

The unseenness of the Master is, therefore, 
not an unnecessary condition. It is not some- 
thing enforced by God to make our loving of 
the Christ more difficult. It is a limitation 
necessary to inspire in us a love that is not the 
love of passion, or the love of self-interest, 
but that is the love of the pure, the true, the 
good, and the loving. Purity, truth, goodness, 
and love are not things you can touch, taste, 
see, hear, or smell. Yet these are the things 
that beget in us a responsive affection. These 
things are unseen, could not be seen, and can 
never be seen by the physical eye. Therefore, 
the invisibility of Jesus Christ is an essential 
element of the development in our hearts of 
a love that is pure, sublime, sweet, invigora- 
ting. When the senses are left behind us at 
the grave, and we pass into a world where we 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



25 



shall know as we are known, heart knowing 
heart, love knowing love, truth knowing truth, 
purity knowing purity, all the unseen realities 
shall be understood with a capacity of com- 
prehension and appreciation not limited by 
sensual bonds and that will remain and develop 
in increasing ability forevermore. 

Some men love and live for something less 
than themselves and are lowered in the scale 
of life thereby. Other men amid much strug- 
gle strive to live for and love something better 
than themselves, and the better the thing is 
that inspires their actions and stimulates their 
enthusiasms, by so much more do they become 
better themselves. We cannot live and we 
do not live without an unseen ideal. There is 
something we wish we were. There is some- 
thing we wish we had. It may be something 
less than ourselves; and by the very wishing 
we are lowering our humanity, lessening our 
capacities, degrading the divine that is within 
us. Or it may be something greater than our- 
selves, something better than ourselves; and 
the more loyal we are to it and the more 
intense our devotion to it, the greater and the 
sweeter we become. The one ideal which we 



20 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



can never reach and the stimulus of which we 
can never lose, is the great ideal of Jesus 
Christ, the unseen lover of human souls, the 
unseen Saviour from human sins. There is 
nothing special in possessing an unseen ideal. 
The only thing special that the apostle empha- 
sizes is the having Jesus Christ himself as the 
central thought of our life, the great attrac- 
tion of our affections, the great motive of our 
activities and the great goal of our hopes. 

Faith and sight are not the same. We say 
"seeing is believing," but it is not. We are 
often deceived. We cannot always trust our 
own eyes. The great element in faith is the 
element which rests upon love. "Faith is the 
evidence of things not seen." This statement 
of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is 
in harmony with the thought of the Apostle 
Peter, "Though now you see him not, yet 
believing." This is faith in the one unseen, 
faith that is not begotten by the intellect. It 
is true there are certain facts believed that do 
not touch the emotions. We believe the 
mathematical truth that two and two make 
four. Our hearts do not beat any faster for 
that belief. There are many such truths be- 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



27 



lieved among us. The great truths that influ- 
ence us most must attract us in some way, 
touch our personality, or stimulate our emo- 
tions. The truth we will believe is the truth 
we love. The thing we think a truth may be 
the most ridiculous lie, yet if we have loved 
the lie we will be so sure it is true that all the 
logic of the philosophers and all the evidence 
of our own senses will not suffice to convince 
us of its falseness. We are surrounded with 
medical and religious transformations wrought 
by believing things contrary to all common 
sense and reason. Try to prove to these peo- 
ple who believe a lie because they love it, per- 
haps because of the personality in whom it 
comes; try to persuade them by any process of 
philosophic reasoning or even by the evidence 
of their own senses that it is a lie they 
believe, and you cannot do it. They have 
become attracted, fascinated by the falsehood, 
and they love it. They love it so well logic 
is powerless to convince them of its falsity. 
Even the senses themselves will not be trusted 
against the creed they love. 

We are very seldom won to accept our ideal 
fry philosophic reasons. The argument of 



28 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



perfection is in itself not enough to win men 
to give to any thing or person the devotion of 
their souls. It is by loving the unseen ideal 
first that, as a rule, we come to believe in it 
with a faith that is boundless. Love of the 
truth begets belief in the truth. Love and 
faith conjoined give us strength of soul that 
conquers despondency, resists doubt, over- 
comes obstacles and masters circumstances. 

The Old Testament religion had done much 
for the race. It was a religion that appealed 
to the senses. There was a gorgeous ritual, 
with all its detailed ceremonials. The devout 
offered multitudes of sacrifices. They had 
exquisite music. There were on great occa- 
sions many priests in appropriate dress, that 
by the splendor of their processional impressed 
the multitude. The appeal of all parts of 
their worship was to the senses. This religion 
had succeeded in elevating man somewhat. It 
had given the nation a ceremonial that in 
many respects was perfect as a spectacular 
event. The Old Testament religion never suc- 
ceeded in making a sinless man. It worked 
from Moses' time to Malachi, and with all per- 
fection of ceremonial the Rabbis admitted they 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



29 



had not succeeded in producing by their faith 
and worship a single soul who for twenty-four 
hours could keep the law. 

Our religion differs from the religion of the 
Old Testament because we believe not in seen 
ceremonials, visible ritual, spectacular proces- 
sions, nor melodious music. We believe in 
the sinless Saviour, unseen but real. Our 
faith, instead of beginning with ceremonial 
and sacrifice to build up for itself a God to 
worship, begins on a basis which the Old 
Testament ritual could never reach — the basis 
of an ideal man, the sinless Saviour, as the 
beginning and end of our love and faith. 

We believe in the unseen more than in the 
seen, for as the unseen in man is the perma- 
nent, so the unseen in Christ is the permanent. 
We all must go back to the dust. What we 
may be like in the other world we do not 
know. It is a world of spirit, not a world of 
matter. We will know each other there as 
heart knows heart, not as face knows face. 
We will see each other there as we really are, 
not looking through a glass darkly, through 
the obscure elements of a material body, or 
the limited organs of appreciation we call 



30 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



senses, but seeing as we are seen and knowing 
as we are known. There we shall see Jesus 
Christ, see the love in Him that is boundless, 
the sympathy that is so sweet, and the 
greatness that is so stupendous. We shall 
see Him so that He can never be to us 
again unseen. As the ages go by and our 
capacity develops, we will be able to appreciate 
the depth of His heart's love, the sweetness of 
His disposition, and the greatness of His 
knowledge more and more. Throughout 
eternity in all our increase of comprehension, 
we shall never reach the stage when we shall 
be satiated and there shall be nothing more 
for us to do and nothing more for us to know. 
The love in God's heart cannot be fathomed 
in endless ages, and the wisdom that planned 
our redemption cannot be understood in all 
its height and depth and length and breadth, 
even in an interminable eternity. 

Love does not depend on sight. Faith does 
not depend on sight. Joy does not depend on 
sight. Therefore, says the apostle, "Though 
now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Joy 
unspeakable. It is too good to tell. You can- 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



31 



not tell it. All deep experiences cannot be 
told. You cannot put into words a sorrow 
that crushes your heart. What cannot be 
expressed in language may sometimes be ex- 
pressed in tears. There is a depth of sorrow, 
however, that cannot find expression even in 
tears. As it is with sorrow, so it is with joy. 
If we have a great happiness, we try to share 
it. We cannot share it all. It is too great to 
crystallize into speech. No glisten of our eye, 
no glow of our face, no smile of our lip, no 
language we know, can give utterance to a 
great experience of gladness. If we know the 
unseen Christ, we shall not only love Him and 
believe in Him, but we shall rejoice in Him. 
All other joys may be more or less exhausted, 
but true joy in Christ is exhaustless. What 
is there to be glad about in the world if there 
is no Christ? The gospel of pessimism has 
been preached by some great philosophers, and 
their last note has been one of despondency 
and despair. Without this unseen Christ 
there is nothing to really rejoice over. The 
Christian ought to be an optimist. He ought 
to be able to see the best even in the worst, 
to see good where the critics can only discover 



32 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



ill, to realize that the world is moving forward, 
and that the force that moves it onward and 
upward is the force of the unseen ideal and 
belief in that ideal as crystallized in Christ 
Jesus. 

Dante, in his "Inferno," tells that, as his 
guide led him through the darksome depths, 
they reached a lake, and on its surface 
were all who had been bad tempered in 
this life. They fought with one another, 
tore each other to pieces in the dark, dull 
water. Virgil drew attention to the fact 
that from the water there were bubbles con- 
tinually rising, and said: "These are they 
who in the world filled the air with sighs, 
and now their sighs break up from the dismal 
waters and form the bubbles on the surface." 
The insight of the great poet recognized 
that the things that make for evil are often 
not the more flagrant sins. There is nothing 
hurts the individual soul or the community 
so much as the gloomy companion, the 
constant complainer, the everlasting critic. 
The fitting place in the future home of punish- 
ment for all such men is a place akin to 
that they would fain have made by their 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



33 



melancholy visage this bright and beautiful 
world of God's. The vision of Dante holds 
all too true of many professing Christians. 
They are so serious they cannot smile. They 
are so worried about the wickedness around 
them they have no time to see any good. 
Their solemnity has often crushed the loving 
laughter of many a bright, believing soul. 
Their solemn seriousness has often killed the 
enthusiasm of a live and interesting meeting. 
Their sad expression has often quelled the 
happy conversation of a social table. Peter 
says to the Christians who were persecuted 
unto death, not to men and women like us 
who are living in a land of freedom with so 
many things that contribute to our personal 
liberty and general comfort — he says to Chris- 
tians persecuted unto death, they must so love 
the unseen Saviour they shall be glad with 
a joy that cannot find expression even in flash- 
ing eye or shining face, in the quick, active 
movements of the body, or in the sweetest 
musical cadences of the lips. 

We should be glad. If our sins are for- 
given, ought we not to be grateful to the ideal 
Saviour who wrought forgiveness? Can a 

3 



34 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



man be grateful, really grateful, sincerely 
thankful, and not show it in gladness? Is not 
one of the foremost evidences of the truth of 
a man's thanks the joy with which he renders 
them? Can man, demon, or angel believe that 
our sins are forgiven if in our face and life 
there be no evidence of the joy gratitude for 
such forgiveness must beget? 

If we admire any person very much we can- 
not help being glad in their company. We 
cannot help talking joyously about what 
they are and what they can do. We become 
enthusiastic about their personality and their 
influence. What shall the world and the 
devils say of us who profess to believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ as the great ideal of our 
soul, if we find no happiness in the admiration 
of the perfection of His character, the sweet- 
ness of His personality and the gloriousness 
of His achievements. 

If we are hopeful, we are always glad. It 
is the man who is despondent and despairing 
who walks through life with bowed back, 
frowning face, downcast eye and feeble knee. 
The man who has hope, hope of achievement, 
hope of success, shows it in every attitude and 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 



gesture, in every tone and glance. Can men 
believe in us who say we hope in God and in 
His Christ, hope that this world is God's, and 
that in it God works, if our face manifests 
despair rather than delight and our attitude 
evidences despondency instead of enthu- 
siasm? If our hope, admiration, and grati- 
tude are real, we must be glad. Let us re- 
joice in the unseen Saviour with a joy that is 
unspeakable, beyond all joys earth can 
give or earth destroy, a joy sorrow but inten- 
sifies, suffering brightens, and death itself 
brings out in glorified splendor upon the back- 
ground of its own dark, shadowy clouds. 

We should be glad in the unseen Saviour 
because of what He is and where He is and 
what He is doing. If He were seen, He 
would not be glorified. There would be no res- 
urrection to reveal to us where our loved ones 
are. We should have no light cast upon the 
valley of the shadow of death through which 
we ourselves must go. Jesus is in Heaven 
with God. He is on the throne. Our loved 
ones are with Him. The consciousness that 
they are with Love itself brings to us, not 
only in the hour of painful parting, but 



36 LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 

throughout all the shadowy memories of the 
years, a glorious satisfaction. 

Jesus Christ is making continual interces- 
sion for us, praying for us, taking our selfish 
petitions, purging them of all impurity, and 
presenting them to God. He is making con- 
tinual intercession for us when, in our fitful 
waywardness and careless negligence, we be- 
come gloomy, despondent, hopeless, and de- 
spairing in this bright, beautiful world of 
God's. He is making intercession for us when 
the shadows come into our lives, when sickness 
weakens our frame, or the shadow of death falls 
across our threshold and leaves an empty chair 
and a vacant place in our heart. He is making 
intercession for us when all others have for- 
gotten to pray for us. When we are left alone, 
the last of our generation, and the father 
whose petitions besought the throne of grace 
daily, and the mother who poured out her 
prayers for us with all the intense affection of 
her heart, have gone home to glory and to God, 
and the younger ones think we do not need to 
be prayed for, and there is none on earth pray- 
ing for us, He keeps us in remembrance. He 
is making continual intercession that our faith 



LOVE, FAITH, AND JOY 37 

in Him may remain, our love for Him increase, 
our joy in Him abound until the experiences 
of this life are merged in the endless gladness 
of the world beyond the grave. 

"Love in loving finds employ, 
In obedience all her joy; 
Ever new that joy will be 
Loving Him who first loved me." 



FAITH 



"FAITH 



"There is no unbelief; 
Whoever plants the seed beneath the sod 
And waits to see it push away the clod, 
He trusts in God. 

"Whoever says when clouds are in the sky, 
'Be patient, heart, light breaketh by and bye,' 
Trusts the Most High. 

"Whoever sees 'neath winter's field of snow 
The silent harvest of the future grow, 
God's power must know. 

"Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep, 
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
Knows God will keep. 

"Whoever says 'To-morrow, ' 'The Unknown,' 
'The future,' trusts the Power alone 
He dares disown. 

"The heart that looks on when eyelids close, 
And dares to live when life has only woes, 
God's comfort knows. 

"There is no unbelief; 
And day by day, and night unconsciously, 
The heart that lives by faith the lips deny, 
God knoweth why!" 



FAITH 



"Do ye now believe?" 



This answer of Jesus is a question. There 
are two Greek words translated by the Eng- 
lish word now. The one refers to now as a 
moment of time without reference to either 
the past or the future. The other refers to 
now in its relation to what has gone before and 
to what will come after. Our language pro- 
vides no equivalent for this latter word. It 
is this word Jesus uses here. He means: 
"At this crisis in my life, at this crisis in 
your own lives, do ye now believe? Con- 
sidering what you have seen and heard, the 
experiences of the past, do ye now believe? 
Dreaming of what you are yet to see and 
know, do ye now believe?" The words touch 
all the past of these men and all their future. 
Asked in this way, "Do ye now believe?" 
becomes a comprehensive and a critical ques- 
tion. 

41 



42 



FAITH 



What did the disciples believe just then? 
Why did they make the statement, "By this 
we believe that thou earnest forth from God?" 
These words immediately precede this in- 
quiry of Jesus. They made it because they 
were face to face with a fact — the fact that 
Jesus had just read their thoughts and given 
them an explanation that had not been asked 
for of the critical situation in which they 
found themselves. This led them to become 
conscious of His omniscience in a way they 
had not been conscious before. They real- 
ized that this man whom they had accepted 
as master knew all things, as God knows all 
things. Face to face with this fact, begot in 
them faith. 4 

There is a kind of faith has no facts 
to quote. We are so constituted we 
must believe something. God has made us 
that wa}'. If we do not found our faith on 
a fact, we found it on a fiction. We can no 
more live without faith than we can live with- 
out breathing. The great question for us is, 
On what is our faith founded? Are we devout 
believers in a great fact, or are we devout 
fanatics who have based our conception of 



FAITH 



43 



truth on some subjective fiction? False faiths 
abound because men prefer to rest their 
creed on a fiction they imagine to be 
true, instead of on a fact their reason and 
experience prove to be true. If you investi- 
gate all the sporadic beliefs, all the erratic 
conceptions of religion, you will find they are 
generally accepted by people who have 
adopted them without reason. They rest 
their belief on some superstitious notion be- 
gotten by credulity, and they are ready to be 
led any whither and every whither by the 
misuse of this essential element in life. 

This fact had been known before. This 
was not the, first time Jesus Christ had 
read men's thoughts. "He knew their 
thoughts" is a statement made previously in 
the story of His life by the evangelists. It 
was not a new fact they had just discovered. 
The peculiarity about the fact at this time 
was that, while on previous occasions He 
had read other men's thoughts, on this 
occasion He read their own. It makes a 
great difference to us whether the matter 
dealt with is an affair of other people or a 
thing that concerns ourselves. The second 



44 



FAITH 



element in faith is thus brought very promi- 
nently before us. Faith consists not only of a 
fact, but of a conviction about a fact, a con- 
viction born of experience. Sometimes men 
are convinced about things, and their convic- 
tion is just as absurd as the supposed fact 
upon which it is founded. Facts are facts 
whether we believe them or not. But when we 
come to have a conviction connected with a 
fact, a conviction begotten by the experience 
of our own emotions, our own intellects, or 
our own souls, the condition is entirely 
changed. What was before only a fact, or 
merely a conviction, or simply an experience, 
when these are united, becomes a faith, a 
belief in some thing or in some person. 

Such was the process through which the dis- 
ciples here passed. They had assented to facts 
before, but mere assent to facts did not beget 
faith. They had convictions before about 
this man called Jesus, but these convictions 
had never touched their experience so closely 
as this incident that had just passed. The 
result was they now reached a stage in 
their development higher than they had 
ever reached before. They actually believed 



FAITH 



45 



in Jesus as coming from God, as having the 
knowledge of God, as being possessed of an 
attribute of God. That is faith. Have you a 
faith of that kind? Do you now believe in 
that way? It is very easy to have a faith that 
believes in a fact but has never felt the influ- 
ence of the fact upon the life. It is easy to 
give assent to forms of truth that have been 
stated in syllogism or in creed. The faith of 
these men was not faith in a statement. It 
was faith in a person who had manifested in 
His personality a characteristic of deity. 
We must have the same kind of faith. Do 
you believe in the Lord Jesus as the Son of 
God, as the Saviour of your soul? Has the 
fact of Christ and the conviction about Christ 
and the experience of Christ so combined in 
your life that you can say, / do now believe? 

The question is partly one of encour- 
agement and partly one of criticism. Their 
faith possessed the characteristics of faith, 
and was a fact, a conviction, and an ex- 
perience, all associated with a blessed per- 
sonality, yet it was wanting in intensity. It 
had been long in coming, you might say. 
These were among the last words of Jesus. 



46 



FAITH 



They had heard this truth repeated over and 
over again, and seen it exemplified time after 
time, but it was only thus late in His short 
public ministry they were led to believe in 
Him in this way. 

This faith was enthusiastic. The enthu- 
siasm was produced by the conditions in 
which the faith was born. It was unable to 
stand the test of new conditions. Here was 
a company of men, all friendly, together 
in an upper room, where friends could 
come very close and where the atmosphere 
associated with friendship developed latent 
sympathies and excited good feeling. They 
had just finished the great Jewish national 
feast, associated with all that was highest 
and best in their nation. Their friend- 
ship and their patriotism begot in them 
kindly emotions, or, in other words, raised 
their spirits. Jesus was there, and Jesus had 
never opened His heart to them so fully as in 
the upper room that night. These three 
facts converging, the disciples were in what 
one might call an environment, an atmos- 
phere that made for faith. The glow of friend- 
ship, the warmth of patriotism, the sweet 



FAITH 



47 



sympathy of the Christ who had opened His 
heart so fully to them, all inspired them 
and they said, "Now we believe." The 
Master says, "Do ye now believe?" Says it 
with a sort of questioning doubt. Says it 
with a capacity to measure man's faith, its 
intensity, its sincerity, its reality. When 
these men moved out of that atmosphere and 
were separated from one another, scattered 
on the hillside, away from this strong, 
loving personality, their faith vanished. "They 
all forsook Him and fled." One betrayed 
Him; another denied Him; they all left Him. 
We need to be careful lest our faith compel 
the Master to put a similar question to us. It 
is easy for us to believe in certain circum- 
stances, in the place or at the time when we 
need faith least. It is easy to believe in the 
church, where we have few temptations, or in 
the home, where we are surrounded with our 
loved ones, or when we have enough of every- 
thing that is absolutely necessary to the main- 
tenance of our physical, our mental, and our 
spiritual well-being. It is easy for us when 
we have friends, when we have national lib- 
erty, when we are close as we think to the 



48 



FAITH 



Christ, to say, I believe. But when we go out 
to our business, where we are scattered one 
from another, where those who believe can 
not touch hands they are so far apart, where 
we are isolated, where we are tempted, do we 
not act over again the conduct of these men 
and deny the faith we professed so loudly in 
the home circle, or confessed so vociferously 
in the church? Let us see to it that our faith 
is not a faith begotten of the moment, with 
its precious associations and its blessed influ- 
ences, but a faith founded upon yesterday's 
experiences and upon to-day's experiences, 
and that will be utilized for to-morrow's expe- 
riences. 

Faith is the essential element in all things. 
Its intensity implies a man's success in 
every department of life. Every part of our 
personality is governed by our faith. There- 
fore, it is an important question: "Do ye 
now believe?" 

Our conscience is controlled by our faith. 
We may believe a lie. If we have the 
power, we will compel others to accept 
our lie. The Inquisition was established 
in good faith by men who believed there 



FAITH 



49 



was no truth outside the Roman Cath- 
olic Church. They persecuted and destroyed 
multitudes of men and women, and did so 
conscientiously, because they believed a lie. 
The day of believing lies is not past. There 
are men and women about us, mayhap some 
of ourselves, who conscientiously believe lies, 
and whose influence is therefore hurtful rather 
than helpful to the home, to the church, and 
to the community. 

Our emotions are governed by our faith. If 
we have no faith in a person, we cannot very 
well love him. If we cannot trust him, 
we can hardly be said to admire him. The 
fundamental basis of all true affection and of 
all true admiration is faith. 

Our judgment is guided by our beliefs. 
You may say: "How? Surely, faith has noth- 
ing to do with judgment." Has it not? Let a 
man make a good political speech, one that 
abounds in happy references to local condi- 
tions, that is full of metaphors and illustra- 
tions easily understood, and applies all the sig- 
nificant elements in his political platform to 
the exigencies of the time. The man may be 
a good orator and speak with force and 

4 



50 



FAITH 



effectiveness. Take two men, ask them re- 
spectively what they think of his speech. 
One man will say it was so fine it was 
almost inspired. The other will declare it 
was the greatest bosh he ever heard from 
a platform. Why this difference in their 
descriptions? Because they were men who 
had different political ideas. They belonged 
to opposite parties. Their faith, their politi- 
cal beliefs controlled their judgment. Our 
judgment is not a thing apart, that can sit and 
hold the balances and find out exactly what is 
true and what is false. Our judgment is 
always biased by our belief. Thus faith 
transcends both judgment and emotion. 

Faith infuses itself into everything. We 
cannot live without faith. We buy our nec- 
essary articles of food from the grocer on 
faith. We believe they are what he says 
they are and that they will not poison us. 
We buy everything on faith. We have no 
capacity to discover whether anything really 
is what it professes to be or not. The readi- 
ness with which we accept statements that 
are not true is evidenced every day by the 
advertisements with which our papers are 



FAITH 



51 



filled. We are the most ready of all nations 
to believe a thing if a man prints it in big 
enough type and prints it often enough, even 
if it is the biggest lie ever invented. This 
characteristic of credulity, this readiness to 
accept as fact the statement printed in 
the biggest type and shouted in the loudest 
tones, to acknowledge as true what has 
never entered into our experience, and has 
never influenced us towards betterment, or 
lifted us from our groveling condition closer 
to God, is one of the greatest signs of weakness 
in modern life. 

Faith is the most common of all the factors 
in human experience. When God tells us we 
must consecrate faith to Him, He does not 
speak to us of something we know nothing 
about. He takes the thing without which 
we cannot exist. We cannot have a friend 
without faith. We cannot have a friend 
unless we believe in him. We cannot have a 
home without faith. If the father and the 
mother do not believe in each other, and if 
the children do not believe in the parents and 
in each other, there can be no true home. 
We cannot be a nation without faith. 



12 



FAITH 



Whatever may be the delinquencies of our 
politicians, there must be a certain amount of 
confidence or the nation could not exist. You 
cannot carry on business without faith. If 
every banker had to investigate all the ele- 
ments associated with each security entrusted 
to him, his time would soon be wasted. He 
must believe in other corporations. He must 
have confidence in his customer. He must 
have faith. It is true, men often attempt to 
mislead each other, but these attempts at mis- 
leading are not the ordinary experience; they 
are the extraordinary. All our commerce, all 
our national affairs, all our family life, all our 
individual relationships are built up on this 
thing called faith. Do ye now believe? is a 
question everybody must answer in the affirm- 
ative, for everybody believes. They cannot 
live a moment without believing. It is an 
essential and inseparable part of existence. 

But the more important question is, Do you 
believe in anything better than these things, 
in anything higher than these things? Do 
you believe in the highest and best of all, God 
himself? God comes to us and He says, "I 
would win you by faith." Why? Because 



FAITH 



53 



faith, as we have seen, is the supreme factor in 
human lives. If God captured the judgment, 
He might not capture the emotions. If God 
captured the intellect, He might not capture 
the judgment. Through faith God controls 
the whole of our character, influences our 
judgment, our emotions, our intellect, and our 
will. If some foreign power were anxious to 
deal with the United States, and proceeded to 
do so with the mayor of Chicago, wouldn't 
that be absurd? The mayor has no right to 
speak for the whole United States. If a for- 
eign nation would deal with the United 
States, their representative must go to the 
head of the commonwealth, and through him 
or his accredited officials discuss the issue. 
God, instead of approaching any subordinate 
part of our nature, such as our judgment, 
emotions, intellect, or will, would influence 
the thing upon which all these depend and 
by which all these are directed. "He that 
cometh to God must believe that He is, and 
that He is a rewarder of them that diligently 
seek Him." 

The disciples at this time did not believe as 
fully as they thought, yet they believed 



54 



FAITH 



more than they had ever believed before. 
This was a step in the progress of their devel- 
opment. They had not such a conviction as 
would stand the test of the morrow, with all 
its complicated situations. This is our diffi- 
culty, also. We have a faith that has a cer- 
tain amount of sincerity and intensity, but it 
is not sufficient to enable us to stand to-mor- 
row's strain. Do you now believe in such a 
way that you will be able to resist to-mor- 
row's temptations, not to-day's ? The tempta- 
tions of the Sunday are trivial compared with 
the temptations of the Monday. The ques- 
tion is, whether we now believe with a faith 
that will not only fit the sanctuary, but will 
also fit the office, the store, and all the 
complicated conditions with which to-mor- 
row's work is associated. If you have never 
believed before, do you believe now, and do 
you believe now with a belief so sincere, so 
thorough, so intense that the more it is tested, 
the stronger it will grow? You believe when 
there is nothing trying your faith. Such was 
not exactly the position of these disciples. Here 
was this man, a carpenter from Nazareth, 
they had got far enough to believe He had 



FAITH 55 

the omniscience of God. It was a big step 
for them, bigger than we have to take to-day. 
But even that big step was not enough to 
keep them right on the morrow. Our faith 
must be stronger than theirs, if we are to 
resist our temptations. 

There are certain things it does not matter 
whether we believe or not. There are, 
indeed, a great many things in religion not 
absolutely essential to righteous living. But 
there are some things it is necessary to believe. 
It is of great importance whether I believe 
God is an enemy or a friend. My inter- 
pretation of the events and incidents I 
must experience will be influenced by my 
belief either that God loves me, or that God 
hates me, or that God is indifferent to me and 
does not care. It makes all the difference in 
the world to me when I am in certain situa- 
tions which of these ideas I believe, which 
of these conceptions has become a conviction 
that cannot be denied, which of these views 
has become an experience that cannot be 
undone. Do you now believe in the Lord 
Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the 
Saviour of your soul? 



56 



FAITH 



It is possible to have faith in Jesus Christ in 
a great many ways, and not to have faith in the 
sense in which He demands it. Men admire 
truth. There are comparatively few men in this 
world who love lying better than truth and who 
reverence falsehood. There may be a few 
men, abnormal men, men whose moral char- 
acter has been somehow marred in its devel- 
opment, who assume that attitude. The aver- 
age man admires what is true and what 
is pure, what is sincere and what is thorough. 
So men admire Jesus Christ, the purity, sim- 
plicity, gentleness, and uprightness of His 
life. It is not difficult to secure such admira- 
tion. We admire all the heroes in the world 
for what in them was heroic. If we take all 
the admirable elements found in every other 
hero the world respects, we find them all 
focused in this man, Christ Jesus. It is, there- 
fore, comparatively easy to develop faith in 
Jesus Christ as the grandest character the 
world has ever seen, as the sublimest hero 
about whom aught has ever been written. 

But that is not enough. A man may admire 
a hero and yet not learn from him. We may 
be willing to sit at the feet of Jesus as schol- 



FAITH 



57 



ars. We may say here is a carpenter who 
found out five or six great universal principles 
and preached them. They are so far-reach- 
ing they touch every particular instance that 
can occur in any human life anywhere. These 
manifest His genius. A few general princi- 
ples laid down in parable and in senten- 
tious proverb that can be applied by men 
to their experience in every land and every 
language and every time. There lies His 
greatness. There have been great men who 
have done similar things in separate lines, but 
there was no man ever in this world who 
seized a few principles and enunciated them 
so that the common people could grasp them 
and apply them anywhere and everywhere to 
their experiences in life. Men admire them. 
They believe in them. They say these prin- 
ciples are true. Yet their faith is of no 
great value to themselves or to others. Many 
men believe in great, good, and true philo- 
sophic statements, who themselves never 
try to live by the statements they accept 
as true, never try to apply the principles 
they are so enthusiastic in admiring. Have 
you never played this part? Have you 



58 



FAITH 



never praised men for doing what you knew 
was right, but what you would never dream 
of doing yourself? Have you never praised 
men for saying what you knew was true, 
but what you would never think of apply- 
ing to your own individual experience? It 
is necessary, therefore, that we examine our 
faith and see whether it be more than 
mere admiration for a heroic man, or more 
than a mere acceptance of sublime truths, the 
universality of whose application our con- 
science and our reason attest. We must go 
beyond that stage and believe in Jesus Christ, 
not only as a hero and a teacher, but as a 
Saviour. 

Do you believe in Jesus Christ as the 
hero of the ages? That is not enough. 
You will be no better perhaps for that, nor 
will the world. Do you believe in Christ as 
the greatest and simplest enunciator of truth? 
That may not do you much good as a man, 
and it may not do much good to your fellows. 
Do you believe in Christ as the only Saviour 
from sin, the only helper to purity, the only 
force that makes in human lives for goodness 
and for happiness? If you so believe with all 



FAITH 59 

your heart and soul and mind and strength, 
whatever be the trials of to-morrow, your 
faith will suffice to meet them; whatever be 
the tests, even of death itself, they can not 
destroy your creed, for it has become part of 
your being, beginning in a fact, developed by 
a conviction, confirmed by an experience and 
concentrated in a person. 

"God give us faith— faith in our fellow-men; 
Faith in humanity, in self and thee; 
Faith in man's hidden aims and nobler self; 
Faith in those motives which we may not see. 

"Faith in man's purity and high desire; 

Faith in his truth, unselfishness and zeal; 
Faith to believe that justice is not dead, 

That men still live who seek the common weal. 

"Faith to believe that goodness still survives, 
That kindliness and love still walk the earth, 
That greed and lust, and avarice and pride, 
Are not the altar fires upon each hearth. 

"God grant us faith in our own power for good, — 
Faith to believe that since thou call'st us thine, 
We can o'ercome all evil, if we will, 
And prove anew our heritage divine. 



FAITH 



'And give us faith in thee that can not fail 

When we see goodness crushed and evil reign, 

When want and suffering desolate the land, 
When justice sleeps, and Christ anew is slain. 

'Give us the faith to see the good in men, — 
A faith in self despite each human fall,— 

A faith, unclouded, Lord, our God, in thee, 
Since that is all, and even all in all." 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



'A faith like this forever doth impart 
Authentic tidings of invisible things; 
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, 
And central peace, subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation." 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



"By faith, Joseph, when he died, made mention of 
the departing of the children of Israel, and gave com- 
mandment concerning his bones." 



The father of Joseph had given a somewhat 
similar commandment. Jacob asked that his 
body should be buried in the Land of Prom- 
ise, yet there is no special commendation of 
Jacob's request. What is the distinction, 
then, between the request of the father and 
the request of the son, that causes the one to 
be passed over as of no great historic value, 
and the other to be emphasized as a distinc- 
tive manifestation of faith? In the case of 
Jacob, it was simply the expression of per- 
sonal desire prompted by family affection. 
He wished to be buried with his fathers. In 
making the request there was no great 
exercise of faith. Joseph, his son, was 
prime minister of Egypt. There was no 
difficulty in the way of providing a gor- 
63 



64 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



geous funeral and depositing his remains 
beside those of Abraham and Isaac. There- 
fore, the historian makes no special comment 
upon the request of Jacob. He tells us of 
the splendor of the funeral and the greatness 
of the mourners. He gives details of the pro- 
cession. He speaks of everything that would 
impress us with the great care Joseph took, 
regardless of expense, to carry out his father's 
desire. But when it comes to Joseph himself, 
the circumstances are altogether altered. 
Joseph leaves behind him no one who occu- 
pies his position of influence and power 
in Egypt. Joseph had, to all appear- 
ances, become an Egyptian. At the time of 
his death, we can doubtless understand how 
all Egypt was talking about him, telling one 
another what a success he had been, how 
Egyptian he had become, how he had brought 
his family into the land and settled them 
there so that they might become part of the 
nation and preserve the success he had 
attained through many generations. There 
was a great difference between Joseph's view 
of the situation and that of the Egyptian 
nation. There are in the monuments some 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



65 



hints that perhaps point in this direction. 
There is a gorgeous tomb bearing upon it cer- 
tain hieroglyphics, part of which have been 
interpreted, "Erected to the Master of the 
Granaries." The tomb is empty. It has 
upon it great adornments. It is beside the 
tomb of one of the great Pharaohs. Some 
archaeologists think the tomb was erected by 
the king whom Joseph served so faithfully, for 
Joseph's mummy, but that when Joseph came 
to die, although he had attained the highest 
position Egypt could give and was offered a 
resting-place beside her honored dead, his 
faith rose superior to all his worldly success. 
He placed his confidence upon the word of 
God that somehow, sometime, his people 
should go back to the land they had been 
promised, and the ideal state he had striven to 
realize in Egypt would be attained by the new 
nation God would settle in Canaan. 

The tendency of success is to destroy faith. 
When a nation or a family become wealthy 
they have no use for God. They have enough 
to eat and enough to drink. They have good 
health and good friends. They have every- 
thing that is contributory to sensual satisfac- 

5 



66 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



tion. Gradually they lose all belief in anything 
but what they can taste and smell and feel 
and hear and see. Joseph's family may have 
reached that condition. They were occupy- 
ing the best land in Egypt, enjoying all the 
secondary renown that came to them because 
of his unique success. At the moment when 
Egypt was realizing the value of this man to 
her monarchy more than at any other time, 
when he is about to vanish from life, leaving 
his work completed, he speaks this word of 
faith. He speaks with all the emphasis of a 
dying man. He speaks from the position of 
a prince who had everything the world could 
contribute to satisfy his desires. He speaks 
as one leaving behind him children to the 
fourth generation to enter into the rich inher- 
itance he left. He speaks at the moment 
when faith was most likely to be lost by the 
Israelitish settlers on Egypt's soil. The 
tendency of our day and time is in this direc- 
tion. We have been so successful as a nation 
and have accomplished so much for our 
material comfort that we are apt to let go our 
hold upon the unseen and the eternal. There 
has been no nation at any time that achieved 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



67 



so rapidly such material prosperity as belongs 
to us to-day. The result of our very success 
has been a lessening of our confidence in the 
being of God, the promises of God, and the 
punishments of God. Jesus says, "When the 
Son of Man cometh shall He find faith on 
the earth." It ought to be our business to 
see that so far as we are concerned He will 
find faith, come when He may. The faith of 
Joseph could not be destroyed in a dungeon 
and could not be throttled upon a throne. 
This faith has been handed down to us. Do 
we believe in God, in God's government of 
the world, in God's promise of good, in God's 
threat of evil, with a faith that no change of 
circumstances can destroy? Joseph spoke 
this word at a time when his people had 
everything Egypt could give them, and, hav- 
ing everything necessary to material success, 
were likely to neglect God's promise, doubt 
its reality, and say, "Egypt is good enough 
for us; we will enjoy its comforts and conve- 
niences and let the promise of Canaan go." 

Joseph manifested faith. Faith is the same 
everywhere. Joseph did not know much. 
He had no Bible at all. He simply had faith. 



68 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



The point of this chapter is to illustrate the 
power of faith as a motive to right living. 
The writer is not dealing with the essentials 
of faith. He is illustrating the power of faith 
to enable men throughout the ages to do the 
right thing at the right time. It is such faith 
we require to-day. We talk of the ruling pas- 
sion being strong in death, and of a man in 
his dying moments manifesting in some 
glance, some gesture, or some broken phrase, 
the characteristic thought that has dominated 
his life from the beginning. By convention- 
ality he may have hidden it from ordinary 
men among whom he mingled, but when he 
comes to the last struggle with the great 
enemy and weakness gains upon weakness, all 
unconsciously he drifts back in thought, in 
word, in look, in gesture to the thing that has 
been his master idea while he lived. In this 
word faith* preserved by the writer of this 
epistle, we see what was the motive of 
Joseph's success. On his death-bed he recalls 
the faith that kept him true as a slave and 
that kept him true as a prime minister. The 
same faith kept him pure in Potiphar's home, 
kept him submissive in the prison, and made 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



69 



him efficient on the throne. The change of 
circumstances did not alter his faith. It is 
not knowledge we need. It is faith. Joseph 
knew only one thing. He believed there was 
a God, and that God had given certain com- 
mandments that were fundamental. These 
had been handed down from father to son, 
and among them there had been one to wor- 
ship Himself only, and bound up with these 
commandments there was a promise that the 
family of Abraham should be chosen to bless 
the world. This was the faith that kept 
Joseph true. What is that faith? It is belief 
in an ideal. Joseph was looking for an ideal 
world. His dreams in boyhood were dreams 
of better conditions. His desire in prison was 
to make the prison a better prison because he 
was there. It was not long until the ruler of 
the prison recognized the capacity of this 
young Hebrew to organize his dreams into 
practical realities. When his great oppor- 
tunity came and he was raised from the prison 
to the throne, he did not change his thought. 
His idea was still the same — to make the 
world a better world and a happier world. 
All the powers of organization that had sue- 



70 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



ceeded in the prison were now applied in a 
broader sense to the nation, and Joseph was 
able to bless Egypt and the world. 

All men, unless they are degenerates, have 
faith in something better than what they have 
and what they are. When a man has lost 
that faith in either being better himself or 
seeing the world about him better, he might 
as well die, for without faith life soon yields 
to despondency, and despondency to despair. 
The man who has ceased to see for himself a 
better self than he is now, to see for himself 
a better world than he lives in now, has lost 
faith, faith in himself, faith in his fellows, 
faith in God. To have such faith, one does 
not need to know much. Joseph had faith in 
an ideal thing, a better self, and a better 
world. His faith was founded upon God and 
upon the consciousness that in the prison and 
on the throne he was filling the purpose of 
God, and that his banishment and his servi- 
tude were meant for good to himself, to his 
brethren, to Egypt, and to the world. It was 
this faith coming back to him on his death- 
bed that impelled him to give utterance to the 
words here preserved for our inspiration. 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



VI 



The Hebrew implies, and the Greek likewise, 
that he kept saying this. He kept repeating 
it over and over again. As he lay dying, the 
one word he spoke was, Canaan, Canaan, 
Canaan. He kept repeating it and repeating 
it until it impressed itself upon the watchers 
and upon his family in a way that could never 
be forgotten. I have no faith in death-bed 
conversions; never had. The thief was saved 
because he believed that in a fellow-criminal 
he saw the Christ. We never can believe like 
that. It was never possible for any other 
man to believe as the thief believed. We 
have not to believe in a common criminal like 
ourselves as our Saviour. The stupendous 
characteristic of the thief's belief — that a 
criminal like himself, hanging on a cross like 
his own, condemned by Jew and Roman alike, 
could be his Saviour — was never possible for 
any other soul. A man's faith may manifest 
itself on his death-bed, but it generally does 
so only when that faith has, been the master 
motive of his life. If we desire to find the 
secret of Joseph's success, we have but to 
investigate the factors that led at each stage 
of his progress to the development of his 



72 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



character and the strengthening of his faith. 
We need faith. We can not live without it. 
The question is, In what will we believe? 
Will it be in God and in better things, or will 
it be in some material element and in general 
drifting toward destruction? Will it be in 
Christ whose power to save has been proved, 
or will it be in some superstitious notion that 
drives faith into credulity, takes the very 
element in our personality that was meant to 
lift us up to God and makes it thrust us down 
below the brutes who with their instincts have 
no superstition? 

Joseph had not only faith, which found ex- 
pression on his death-bed and was the secret 
of his life's duty, but the influence of his faith 
lived after him. How much do we owe to- 
day to the lives of faith that are recorded in 
this chapter? These men and women who 
found in faith the motive that enabled them 
at critical moments in their life history and in 
the world's history to do the thing that made 
for progress and for betterment were our 
benefactors. What do we owe to-day to the 
faith of a man who could say, " Athanasius 
contra mundiim" — Athanasius against the 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



73 



world? He took his position upon the truth 
as he saw it against all men, and transmitted 
the word he was willing to defend at the cost 
of his life to be used by us in the foundations 
of our civilization. What do we owe to the 
faith of Augustine, to the faith of Huss, to 
the faith of Luther, to the faith of Calvin, to 
the faith of Knox and to the faith of Wesley? 
It was their faith in the unseen that enabled 
them to battle for the truth, discharge difficult 
tasks with wondrous patience and leave to us 
our heritage. Joseph gives us one of the best 
illustrations of the influence of faith upon 
others after the believer himself is gone. 
"He gave commandment concerning his 
bones." In the Book of Job you find Eliphaz 
speaking of seeing in the night a spirit pass 
before him that made the hair of his flesh 
stand up. That was preaching by a ghost. 
But Joseph preached by his mummy. There 
it was, unburied, for between three and four 
hundred years. It was an influence calling the 
Israelites away from the material satisfactions 
of Egypt, from the pains and penalties of its 
servitude, to the ideal government of Canaan. 
Think of it! Preaching by his dead body for 



74 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



almost four hundred years. What an influ- 
ence was that! It might be that in his 
thought there was some reference to an 
Egyptian custom which may have existed 
then, but more probably originated after- 
ward, of placing at each feast a mummy. At 
every banquet sat a mummy with veiled face, 
to remind the banqueters amid their pleasures 
that death was the common end of all, so that 
behind the garrulous speech and the light 
laughter there might always be the serious 
feeling that death comes sure and certain. 
Joseph, utilizing that Egyptian conception, 
may have left his mummy to speak, not to 
any group of banqueters in an Egyptian 
palace, but to speak to his whole nation the 
great truth he loved and for which he lived — 
that God was working out his purpose in the 
world, and that the ideal nation would be a 
better nation than he had been able to make 
Egypt, and would reach this condition in the 
land promised to his fathers. 

If we have no faith in God and goodness, we 
can not know joy in life. We can have nothing 
to look back upon and we can have nothing to 
look forward to. The record in which we glory 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



75 



is a record of faith. All the men who have con- 
tributed to the progress of the world, all the 
men who have contributed to the upbuilding 
of the nation, have been men of faith. They 
had faith in an ideal toward which they 
looked and for which they worked. We must 
have a similar faith. It is not easy to de- 
velop such a faith upon the basis of a mere 
promise. Men say it is hard to believe to- 
day. But it is easier to believe to-day than it 
was for Joseph in Egypt. Consider what you 
have and what Joseph had, the conditions 
amid which he struggled and the conditions 
amid which you struggle. It is as a child's 
game to a battle for a nation's life, the con- 
trast between your efforts and the efforts of 
Joseph to be true to the best he knew. 
Joseph had no Bible. He had only a vague 
promise transmitted from father to son. It 
sufficed for his purpose. We have no such 
vague thing to work upon. Joseph had diffi- 
culty comprehending this promise. Think you, 
when he was in the dungeon, imprisoned 
because he had lived up to his ideal and re- 
fused to conform to the vicious customs of 
Egyptian society, that he did not sometimes 



76 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



wonder how the ideal would ever be reached? 
The faith of Joseph made the prison itself a 
stepping-stone to the palace. If we have 
similar faith we will accomplish similar 
achievements. Take a vine and plant it. 
Minister to its roots with all good soil and 
varied methods of cultivation. The vine 
grows and grows and grows until its branches 
spread and its luscious clusters hang in the 
sun. In its growth it finds a block of granite. 
What can it do with the granite? Its rootlets 
cannot pierce the solid stone. Shall it stop 
its growth? Shall it go down underneath and 
be crushed out of life by the block's weight? 
What use can the vine make of the granite? 
Watch the vine, and little by little it will 
send its network of rootlets around the stone 
until it surrounds it with an all-embracing 
clasp of life. The stone that seemed so likely 
to destroy the plant's growth and thwart its 
development, becomes the anchor by which it 
holds itself fast when the hurricane sweeps 
the terrace and all the other vines are dragged 
from their place. Faith can take a stone and 
make an anchor of the stone. Faith can take 
a dungeon with its darkness and its depression 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



77 



and make it contributory toward the stability 
of the character and the strength of the life. 
Even in the hardest things in life there is for 
us something that will help us upward and 
onward, something that will make our view 
of life more comprehensive and our growth 
more constant. The faith of Joseph could 
not be shaken either by dungeon or palace or 
tomb. May we have similar faith. We can 
have it. It is easier for us than for Joseph. 
We do not need to believe in a principle 
transmitted from father to son, or a promise 
that by an omission of a word might lose its 
breadth and its significance. We have a 
Book of God. Not only so, but we have a 
personality who Himself lived, as never did 
other man live, this life of faith. Jesus 
Christ has shown us how this life can be 
lived, not in one station, but in every station. 
He has shown us more perfectly than Joseph 
ever could that it is not mere knowledge that 
enables you to believe. He has proved that 
when you believe with all your heart no loss 
however great, no sorrow however keen, no 
burden however heavy, will destroy your trust 
in a God who is a father, whose heart is love, 



THE FAITH OF JOSEPH 



whose way is good, and whose purpose is to 
enable all ideals of all men everywhere to be 
realized at last in His own perfect home. 

"Jesus, our life and hope, 

To endless years the same; 
We plead Thy gracious promises, 
And rest upon Thy name. 

"By faith in Thee we live; 
By faith in Thee we stand; 
By Thee we vanquish sin and death 
And gain the heavenly land." 



WEARINESS 



"Art thou weary, art thou languid, 

Art thou sore distressed? 
'Come to me,' saith One, 'and coming, 
Be at rest.' 

"Hath he marks to lead me to him, 

If he be my Guide? — 
•In his feet and hands are wound-prints, 
And his side.' 

"Is there diadem, as Monarch, 

That his brow adorns?— 
'Yea, a crown, in very surety; 
But of thorns.' 

"If I find him, if I follow, 

What his guerdon here? — 
'Many a sorrow, many a labor, 
Many a tear.' 

"If I still hold closely to him, 

What hath he at last?— 
'Sorrow vanquished, labor ended, 
Jordan passed.' 

"If I ask him to receive me, 

Will he say me nay? — 
'Not till earth, and not till heaven 
Pass away.' 

"Finding, following, keeping, struggling, 

Is he sure to bless? — 
'Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs, 
Answer, Yes.' " 



WEARINESS 



"The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the 
learned that I should know how to speak a word in 
season to him that is weary." 



Whatever may have been the original 
application of this prophecy, the common 
interpretation refers it to Jesus Christ, and 
the prophet here in his poetic imagery 
undoubtedly portrays an essential element in 
the character and conduct of the Great 
Master. "The Lord God hath given me the 
tongue of the learned that I should know 
how to speak a word in season to him that is 
weary. ' ' 

Weariness is a common experience of 
humanity. Its source may be very varied, 
but to all men sometimes this experience 
comes with its depressing despondency. 
Therefore, if the race is to have a saviour, he 
must be one who understands this common 
disease and can deal with it satisfactorily 
and successfully. "To speak a word to him 

6 81 



82 



WEARINESS 



that is weary." Such was undoubtedly one 
of the marked features in the life of Christ, 
one of the forces that contributed toward 
His influence upon the people of His time 
and upon the race ever since. 

There is the weariness sin brings to men. 
Most men and women have committed some 
sin until they have become disgusted and would 
fain get rid of it if they could. But it has so 
fastened itself upon them that by no power they 
possess can they break its bonds and set them- 
selves free. The liar gets tired of lying, far more 
tired of his lying than others do of listening to 
his lies. His lying has destroyed his own power 
to believe anything or to believe anybody. 
The man who has destroyed his power to 
believe in anything or anybody has made for 
himself a life of uttermost weariness. There 
can be nothing in hell that makes hell so 
horrible as the very consciousness that no soul 
can trust another soul in anything at all. W e 
make our own hell in this respect. It is not 
made for us. It is manufactured by us. 
The weariness sin brings to sinners when it 
reaches its full fruition is one of the greatest 
burdens of agony a human soul can bear. It 



WEARINESS 



83 



is so with every sin. There is no man can 
tell you the horrors of drunkenness better 
than the drunkard. There is no man who 
feels he has lost self-respect, lost his loved 
ones, lost his all and cannot win them back 
by any effort of his own, so sorely as the 
drunkard himself. Whoever, therefore, 
comes to the race with a word that will suffice 
to lift the burden of sin from sinners wearied 
with the curse of their own sin, has a right 
to be called the world's saviour. 

This weariness we all have known, for we 
have all sinned. Some of you may be under 
the burden of disgust with yourselves to-day, 
having lost your self-respect by your own 
transgression, and feel now the weariness that 
comes to men and women who have chosen 
the worst. Now you know the sin that 
seemed to promise pleasure when it was first 
committed has brought you a burden of 
weariness of which you never dreamed. You 
cannot drop this burden from your shoulder 
by any effort of your own. The thongs which 
bind it cannot be cut by any mental, moral, 
or physical surgery. To-day you need, as all 
sinners have needed, this saviour, who can 



84 



WEARINESS 



speak the word of power that shall remove 
the burden of weariness your sin hath created. 

There are many other causes of weariness. 
There is the weariness that comes from work. 
We get tired of our tasks. We are unable to 
keep up with ourselves. Our thought of 
what we ought to do and our desire of accom- 
plishment runs ahead of our physical capac- 
ity. We become exhausted by our efforts. 
Our own conceptions of what we can do in 
our respective callings impels us to over-exer- 
tion, and over-exertion begets weariness. 
This weariness is depressing. It becomes a 
burden and delays our progress; becomes, 
indeed, the greatest of all hindrances to the 
accomplishment of our plans and the attain- 
ment of our desires. How shall we be quit 
of this weariness of the body? It has been 
brought on, as a rule, not by honest and hon- 
orable work. There are very few men who 
suffer the burden of weariness from honest 
and honorable tasks. Men who suffer from 
weariness, suffer not so much because of the 
work they have done or of the work they are 
doing, as of the worry they themselves have 
introduced into their own activities. Worry 



WEARINESS 



85 



is like sand in fine machinery, which marks 
the steel with scratches, absorbs the oil, 
begets friction, and compels, trifling though 
each grain may be, the whole complicated 
machine to stop. If we would work well, we 
must try to eliminate from our lives this 
worry — worry about the past, worry about the 
present, worry about the future. We must 
plan and work so that our work and plan shall 
come into harmonic relationships, and there 
shall be in our activities true enjoyment and 
successful progress. How can this be done? 
It is all very well to preach against worry, but 
where is the man who can speak the word 
that will cause worry to cease? Whoe'er he 
be, from where'er he comes, he deserves to 
be called the world's saviour. 

Again, there is the burden of suffering. 
We all have experienced pain. The pain 
may have been the retaliation of nature 
because we have disregarded her laws of 
health and disobeyed her promptings. But 
why it came has nothing to do with the agony 
we experience. Pain is a burden to us, 
whether it be an aching tooth or some more 
serious torture of the system, |t is a worry. 



86 



WEARINESS 



It makes our life dissatisfied, our surround- 
ings dismal. It makes us incompetent to fill 
our place and discharge our duties thoroughly. 
Therefore, it worries us. It is a problem, 
this problem of pain — why it should be, why 
it was sent, why it is necessary; but we 
recognize that those who have not suffered 
pain, as a rule, are very cold-hearted, unsym- 
pathetic, unmanly men and incomplete 
women. We realize from this very fact that 
pain must have its place in the processes of 
God in making us fit to be comrades with one 
another and to be companions with the Christ 
forevermore. But it is a worry. You can- 
not get rid of the fact that pain is a worry. 
If the pain restricts your activities to your 
bed or your house, the consciousness of the 
weary monotony of the sick-room and of the 
limitations of the door come home to you 
with great emphasis. Surely, the man who 
can speak a word to the race that will make 
suffering, bodily suffering, an experience in 
which patience may be revealed, the man who 
will speak to the race the word that will 
enable it to endure the torture of pain with- 
out murmuring, must be a saviour. 



WEARINESS 



87 



Then there is sorrow. The pain of the 
heart when those upon whom our hopes were 
centered failed us at the critical moment, dis- 
appointed us entirely, so that our life's dream 
was shattered, and we lay down aweary. In 
many a home the son and daughter whom the 
parents loved and watched develop, in whom all 
their hopes were centered, has suddenly broken 
away from all restraint, degraded an honor- 
able name and disgraced the family. A wear- 
iness has been brought into the hearts of the 
household no human sympathy can alleviate. 
Sometimes it may not be so bad. Many a son 
and daughter have done nothing that contra- 
vened the dictates of conventional society, 
but with every opportunity for accomplish- 
ment provided by parents, have turned out 
absolutely no good. That does not mean that 
they did any particular harm, but they have 
done no good. How hearts that have hoped 
for so much from a loved son or an admired 
daughter become wearied with life when they 
see their dreams shattered and their desires 
disappointed. Surely, if any man can come 
and speak to such souls a word that will 
enable them to rise above such torture of the 



88 



WEARINESS 



heart, he ought to be called the world's 
saviour. 

Or death may come into the home and 
snatch the sweetest angel from the household, 
leaving a vacancy nothing can fill. All that 
we can say for one another, all that we can 
do for one another beside the casket or at the 
grave's lip, is useless to relieve the weari- 
ness, the loneliness such loss begets in human 
hearts. If any one can come and speak a 
word so plain, so strong, that it will enable 
souls to stand beside their dead without this 
feeling of absolute weariness, then that man 
is indeed a world-saviour. 

Weariness has come to each one of us in 
one or other or all of these varied ways. 
Some of us this morning may realize that we 
are weary, and considering what we have 
passed through and what we are passing 
through, it seems hardly worth while to worry 
with life. All the sunshine has gone out of 
it; all the energy out of our personality, all 
our enthusiasm has evaporated, and all our 
hopes are ended. The weary. There is nq 
group of men or women anywhere in which 
the vast majority may not be aptly describee) 



WEARINESS 



89 



in this word of the old prophet. The weary. 
The weary. 

We want some comfort. We want some 
one or some thing that will stimulate us to 
throw off our despondency and become our- 
selves once more. The prophet tells us his 
ideal. He says there shall be one appointed 
and instructed for that purpose. ''The Lord 
hath given me the tongue of the learned that 
I should know how to speak a word in season 
to him that is weary." There is the gift — the 
gift of speech — the tongue of the learned. 
The revised version has it, "the tongue of 
them that are taught" — the learners, the dis- 
ciples, the scholars. "He hath given me the 
tongue of the learned." We are accustomed 
to speak of men who talk much as if they 
were of little account. Perhaps the misuse 
of the gift of speech makes the criticism 
sometimes true. Consider, however, what 
language means to us. It is the great dis- 
tinguishing mark between man and animals. 
The animal may express its feelings in 
sounds, but the sounds are interpretations of 
emotions, not interpretations of intelligence. 
The chasm between the human race and the, 



90 



WEARINESS 



animal creation is specially denned by our 
power to express intelligently thought in 
language. "He hath given me the language 
of the learned, the tongue of the scholar." 
Carlyle preached his gospel of silence. He 
said that the dumb nations were the nations 
that had made the world. He was ever 
preaching against talk. But Thomas Carlyle 
himself was always talking. His own preach- 
ing and his own practice were about as con- 
tradictory as that of any other preacher we 
could think of. Carlyle in one sense was 
right. There is too much talk, but it is not 
the talk of the learned, of those who know 
what is wrong and know what to say to right 
it. A word, when it has burst from the lips of 
the learned, has revolutionized a nation. 
There must be a word first. Men are led by 
words. The word of command is needed in 
an army if the army is to be a victorious 
army rather than a routed mob. As it is with 
an army, so it is with the race. There must 
be a word, a speaker who knows what to say 
at the proper time, to direct human actions 
and control human conduct. Therefore, he 
needs to be learned, to know his business, to 



WEARINESS 



91 



be conversant with all kinds of cases that may 
be brought to his attention, and speak the 
word. The weapons of our warfare are not 
carnal, but spiritual, but they have been 
mighty to the bringing down of strongholds. 
Jesus Christ spoke the word of the gospel. 
Against it there was all the prejudice of the 
Jew, all the philosophy of the Greek, all the 
pride of the Roman. It was only a word. It 
was launched upon the world, a world that 
resented it, that resisted it, that hated it. 
The word worked its way to power and des- 
troyed Jewish prejudice, destroyed Grecian 
philosophy, destroyed Roman pride. The 
word He spake exercises to-day a greater 
power upon the race than did all of these 
three great forces of prejudice, philosophy 
and pride combined. Jesus was a saviour 
taught for His task, who could speak a word 
with a fitness and power that made it tell 
upon the race forevermore. 

4 'He has given me the tongue of the learned 
that I should know how to speak a word in 
season to him that is weary." The tongue of 
the learned to speak to the weary. Was not 
that a great waste of education? If He had 



92 



WEARINESS 



been given the tongue of the learned to tell 
us of the mysteries of nature after which 
scientists have been striving for all the ages, 
would it not have been more important? If 
He had told us some system of philosophy 
that could comprehend in it the divine and 
the human, the relationship of the spiritual 
and the material, would not that have been 
more in keeping with such a description of His 
qualification as the tongue of the learned? 
Men naturally say when you tell them that 
the Christ came to speak a word in season to 
them that are weary: "Why didn't He speak a 
word about science? Think of what science 
has done for the race. Why didn't He speak 
a word of philosophy? Think of what philos- 
ophy has accomplished in the realm of 
thought. Why didn't He speak a word on 
economics? Think of all the intricate ques- 
tions of politics that men have had to struggle 
over and discuss and strive to solve." 

It is the last task that human thought 
would expect the tongue of the learned to dis- 
charge, simply to speak a word in season to 
him that is weary. But is not the description 
of the prophet suitable? What has science 



WEARINESS 



93 



done to deal with the great questions that 
make for human weariness? Is a man any 
less disgusted with His sin because he can 
commit it by the light of electricity? Is it 
any less sinful because of the white glare that 
falls upon his personality while he indulges in 
his transgression? Has any discovery science 
has made helped to make a man happy? The 
great discoveries of recent times have indeed 
been contributory toward our comfort. But take 
all that science has accomplished, when you 
sum it up together, has it really increased 
human happiness? Does it make a man who 
despises himself because he is a thief and a 
liar and a drunkard and a libertine, any less 
weary with his sin to know how far it is to the 
most distant or the nearest fixed star? Does 
it make him any happier to know how disease 
is promulgated by a microbe? Does science 
contribute in any sense toward his relief in 
his weariness with life? You may take all 
the sciences, add their achievements together, 
and what good will they do me if I am 
wearied with myself, weary with my life, and 
weary with my work? In philosophy, what 
has been discovered that has made men 



94 



WEARINESS 



happier? Has the philosophy of Kant or of 
John Stuart Mill contributed an iota toward 
our being quit of sin, toward our being better 
able to do our work, toward our understand- 
ing what comes after the grave? From the 
days of Socrates to the days of Spencer, there 
has been philosophical system after phil- 
osophical system, but not one of them has 
succeeded in transforming the weariness of 
sin, or interpreting the problem of pain, or 
eliminating the worry of work, or helping to 
bear the burden of sorrow. The man who 
can deal with these questions must be more 
learned than the greatest chemist, or the 
greatest geologist, or the greatest astronomer, 
or the greatest botanist that ever lived. The 
man who can solve these problems of weari- 
ness must know more than the greatest phi- 
losopher, either before his time or since his 
time, who has written for man's edification. 
Therefore, the prophet is not wrong in saying 
that the ideal saviour needs the tongue of the 
learned. He needs to know more than 
science can tell, more than philosophy can 
tell, if he is to make men bear their weariness 
bravely, or to bring them out of the expe- 



WEARINESS 



95 



rience of weariness into the experience of 
happy, healthful activity. 

The ideal saviour of the race must also have 
tact, for he is to speak a word in season. It 
is not only what he says, but how he says it 
and when he says it. There are men and 
women who think they know what to say to 
wearied souls. We sometimes drift from 
weariness to weariness, from greater to 
greater despondency, and at last, when in de- 
spair, some cold-hearted, glib talker meets us 
and says: "I told you so, I told you so. It 
was not for want of being told." Others say 
the word that is needed, but say it at the 
wrong time or in the wrong tone. The right 
word said at the wrong time or in the wrong 
tone is not a gospel to the man to whom it is 
spoken. The very Gospel itself, the Word of 
words, may, by being spoken at the wrong 
time and in the wrong tone, become not a 
gospel, but a message of despair to those to 
whom it is addressed. Most men can talk, most 
men can read, most men can sing. What 
makes the difference between some men's 
talk and others, between some men's reading 
and others, between some men's singing and 



96 



WEARINESS 



others? Each man pronounces the language, 
it may be, correctly. His grammar is fault- 
less. There is no question about his sen- 
tences. They are arranged with order and 
euphony. Why is it that, speaking the same 
language, according to the same grammar, 
one man speaks it with effect, reads it with 
effect, sings it with effect, and another fails? 
How many things are contributory? There is 
the voice itself; there is the tone; there is the 
accentuation; there is the gesture; there is the 
whole attitude of the body. All these things 
are contributory to that difference which makes 
one man able to say the right word in the 
right way at the right time, and makes 
another man fail. 

Jesus, the ideal Saviour, comes into our 
lives, and He has a word for every wearied 
soul, a word for the man disgusted with his 
sin, a word for the man wearied with his 
work, a word for the man worn out by his 
pain, a word for the man broken down with 
his sorrow. Jesus speaks, not in the harsh 
and unsympathetic language of some human 
sympathizer, but with the subtle sweetness of 
His own loving spirit. Jesus utters the word 



WEARINESS 



97 



the soul needs with a suitableness and an 
attractiveness that none but Himself can 
attain. 

Jesus speaks it just at the right time. You 
may say there is not much in time. Any time 
will do for a word to the weary man. En- 
courage him at any moment. The Germans 
have a proverb that an angel has passed when 
they mean to speak of an opportunity. We 
often are not quick enough to seize the 
moment when the angel passes in some life, 
to speak the word that is absolutely necessary 
to arouse them out of their despondency, 
enable them to shake off their weariness, and 
enter into the healthy happiness of human 
life. 

Here is a seed, a common seed of wheat. I 
will sow it now in the snow. The farmer 
says: "What is the good of that? It will be 
frozen." "Ah, but," I say, "is it not good 
wheat?" "Yes, it is good wheat." "Is it 
not a living seed?" "Yes, it is a living 
seed." "Oughtn't it to be sown?" "Yes, it 
ought to be sown." "Why not do it now?" 
"Because now, with the frost and snow, the 
fact that it is a good seed, a living seed, and 

7 



98 



WEARINESS 



ought to be sown, will not make it grow; it 
will die." Even so the word that is known to 
be good, the word that is known to suit the 
case, if it is not spoken at the right time, at the 
proper moment, often works ill rather than 
good, often increases rather than helps the 
weariness of the human soul. 

Jesus Christ is the great Saviour who has 
been taught as the learned are taught. He who 
would come to each soul here this morning, 
whatever be their weariness, with a word that 
just suits their case, come to them with a word 
spoken in His own sweet, sympathetic way, 
a word that will lift them out of their de- 
spondency, free them from the burden of their 
sin, strengthen them for life's duties, and make 
them happy in the service of their Lord. 
What word you need, I know not, but the 
Christ knows. 

Are you disgusted with yourself? Are you 
wearied with your sin? Then Jesus comes 
with the word 1 'forgiveness." None but 
He can say it as it ought to be said. He 
has spoken it with the tremor of pain and 
agony on Calvary's cross. 

Your work may weary you. Jesus has a 



WEARINESS 



99 



word for the worker. He was the hardest 
worker among men. Bodily and spiritu- 
ally, He labored. He can sympathize with 
every wearied worker. He says to you: 
"Whate'er your task, recognize it as a God- 
sent one. Then you can say, as I said, 'It is 
my Father's business.'" Feeling that your 
calling is of God, you shall discharge your 
duties in the home, your labors in the office, 
with more enthusiastic devotion, with more 
sustained effort and with more conscious pride. 

Jesus has a word for the sufferer, for He 
himself was tried in all points like as we are. 
God had no son who had not suffered; there- 
fore, it became Him to suffer also. Where 
was there greater pain than the pain of Geth- 
semane? He knew the pangs of hunger in the 
wilderness. He knew the dry throat of thirst 
upon the cross. Pain He has experienced, so 
that He can come and speak a word to the 
weary, the word they need. He says: '% 
too, have suffered; I will help you." 

Jesus comes to the sorrowing with a 
word of consolation none but Himself can 
speak. The sympathy expressed in the one 
word, "Mary," beside the open grave, caused 



I. of C 



100 



WEARINESS 



a woman's sorrowing heart to throb with joy, 
and was the beginning of that message of 
peace to all sorrow-stricken souls and dark- 
ened homes until the world shall end. He 
stood by the sisters at Bethany and mixed His 
tears with theirs as they wept for the brother 
lost for a time, and then with one word, a 
word of power, He turns and says, "Come 
forth," and from the grave's mouth emerges 
the brother for whose loss they had sighed so 
deep and wept so sore. As it was with these, 
so it is with all. He comes with a message 
to every heart that is broken with sorrow 
now. He says, as none before Him could say: 
"I am the Resurrection and the Life. The 
loved ones lost for a time in the gathering 
shadows have but gone before. There is light 
and life and love where they are with Me. 
My word for them is a word of welcome. My 
word for you is a word of cheer. You, too, 
shall come to be where they are, and then 
you shall know from henceforth forever no 
more the burdens of weariness with which life 
has been restrained." 

Jesus has received from the Father a training 
for His task. Jesus has a word, a word of one 



WEARINESS 



101 



who is learned, a word that suits your case, a 
word you can get from none other, a word He 
would speak by His own spirit in His own 
way, in His own tone, to you now, if you 
would be relieved from your weariness and 
sent out to the world's work healthy, happy, 
hopeful Christian men and women. 

"Rest of the weary, 

Joy of the sad, 
Hope of the dreary, 

Light of the glad, 
Home of the stranger, 

Strength to the end, 
Refuge from danger, 

Saviour and friend. 

"Pillow where lying, 

Love rests its head, 
Peace of the dying, 

Life of the dead, 
Path of the lowly, 

Prize at the end, 
Breath of the holy, 

Saviour and friend." 



OUR ROCK 



"O God, the Rock of Ages, 

Who evermore hast been, 
What time the tempest rages, 

Our dwelling-place serene. 
Before the first creations, 

O Lord, the same as now, 
To endless generations 

The everlasting Thou." 



OUR ROCK 



"Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies 
themselves being judges." 



In this poem there is a constant repetition 
of the word "rock." There was good reason 
for its recurrence. To the Israelites in 
Egypt, a rock was a unique object. In the 
loose soil of that land it Was a very desirable 
thing. When the Israelites left Egypt that 
they might wander in the wilderness, they 
saw but few rocks. Those they did see had 
associated with them sublime and glorious 
memories. There was no spot so hallowed as 
Sinai. The mountain looked like one great 
giant rock rising from the desert plain. 
Horeb seemed like the ruin of some rocky for- 
tress. Hor, where Aaron died, had precipi- 
tous sides flanked by bastions of sandstone. 
Other rocky mountains were connected with 
their national story. They took this natural 
object and made it an emblem of their God, 
and saw in each rock a revelation of Deity. 
105 



106 



OUR ROCK 



There were three characteristics of the 
Divine they saw in a rock. There was the 
thought of permanence. The rock remained. 
The sandy soil shifted, but the rock moved 
not. We transfer the same conception to 
the mountains. Yea, their own poets also did 
so. They speak of the everlasting hills. A 
rock spoke to them of defense. It was be- 
hind a rock they could find shelter from the 
storm. It was behind a rock they could 
obtain the best security from a foe. Rocks 
were sought because of their defensive char- 
acter. The strength of Edom lay in their 
dwelling among the rocks. The rock-hid city 
of Petra was Edom's capital, and its ruins to 
this day testify to its great strength for de- 
fense. A rock was associated with refresh- 
ment. It was by striking a rock Moses 
brought forth water for the thirsty host. 
They spoke of the honey found in the 
crevices of the rock. They dreamt of the 
satisfaction of all the interests of life being 
found behind a rock. It was but natural, 
therefore, that they should take this symbol 
and make it in their poetry an effective 
picture of their God. 



OUR ROCK 



107 



God as the Israelites understood Him, God 
as we understand Him, is the complete and 
perfect expression of these three characteris- 
tics. God is eternal, more so than the rock. 
God is the defense of His people better 
than ever any rocky fort. God is the satis- 
faction of the human soul more abundant in 
the refreshment He brings to the weary spirit 
than ever gushing flood from rock's base or 
all the honey could be garnered from its 
crevices. These three things are the three 
things we need to make life satisfactory. 

These three things can only be found in God. 
We long for something changeless in which 
we can put our trust in this world of change, 
and there is no changeless thing but God. We 
desire some defense in the hour of danger, a 
defense that will suffice for all the ills of 
poverty, for all the throbs of pain, for all the 
burdens of sorrow, for all the agonies of 
death. There is no defense man can con- 
ceive will suffice for all such experiences but 
the God who is emblematized under the sym- 
bol of a rock. 

We search for satisfaction. We need re- 
freshment. Augustine says God made us so 



108 



OUR ROCK 



that we can find no rest until we find it in 
Himself. There has never yet been a life 
complete, a heart absolutely happy, a soul 
that abounded in satisfaction, but the life, 
the heart, the soul that trusted in a 
great, good, loving, strong, eternal God. 
The metaphor, though it be from the 
plains of Egypt and the wilderness of 
Arabia, is a metaphor that expresses the 
thoughts of our hearts to-day as plainly and 
as pointedly as when first this poem fell from 
the lips of its author, or the dim vision broke 
upon his soul in the lonely desert. 

There are other rocks beside our Rock. 
Man cannot live in this world without some- 
thing in which he can trust. Every man has 
some secret of reliance, some source of con- 
fidence. The poet's thought is that while 
men may have other sources of strength and 
defense and satisfaction, none of these can 
compare for permanence, might, and enjoy- 
ment with our God. There were many gods 
in the days of this poet. There were the gods 
of Egypt, Philistia, Edom, and all the other 
surrounding nationalities. Their worshipers 
trusted them, trusted them exactly for the 



OUR ROCK 



109 



same things as those for which Israel trusted 
Jehovah. He sings: "Their gods are not as 
our God. Their rocks are not as our Rock." 

We only need to consider the things to 
which men resort for some permanent anchor- 
age, for some defense from the dangers to 
which they know they are exposed, for some 
satisfaction for the desires to which all hearts 
are sensitive, and we find they still make 
for themselves rocks. It is a peculiarity of 
evil that it cannot originate. It can only 
imitate. Some of its imitations are wonder- 
fully attractive. Therefore, it is in no wise 
remarkable that many who have no insight, 
who have not much penetrative power, are 
misled by the imitation. They cannot see 
that it is a mere pasteboard rock, and not a 
solid thing, behind which they seek for refuge, 
upon which they rely for permanence, and in 
which they hope for satisfaction. It is still 
true, as the old Christian father said, the 
devil is the ape of God. Since he cannot 
create, Satan makes his imitations marvel- 
ously perfect. Men and women are misled 
thereby. 

There are many things that money can do. 



110 



OUR ROCK 



It seems to be almost omnipotent. Just 
think how many things it can do. It seems 
to be almost permanent. A man can by it 
make his name eternal. It has many charac- 
teristics that are desirable that all men seek. 
It can keep us from poverty. It can bring us 
in sickness the best skill. It can surround us 
with friends. It can minister to us many 
comforts. There are a multitude of things 
money can do; so many, indeed, that men 
have often made it their god. Sometimes 
they did it knowingly, sometimes without 
knowing it. Men have trusted money as if 
there could never again be a drop in stocks, 
as if there could never again be a failure of 
banks, as if there could never again be any 
change in the relationships between labor 
and capital that would utterly destroy for a 
time its apparently permanent value. Money 
has a wonderful method of manipulating 
things and of impressing men by its spectac- 
ular movements with an idea of its permanent 
worth. Evil has taken advantage of the de- 
sirable characteristics of money and mag- 
nified them out of all proportion until money 
has become many a man's god. He only 



OUR ROCK 



111 



wakes up to a consciousness of its uselessness 
when the wage-earning day is past and his 
vitality is gone. He finds that his rock is not 
a rock at all, but a mirage that has vanished 
from sight when most needed. The desires 
he thought money would satisfy have not 
been satisfied. The success money achieved 
has become to him monotonous. The life he 
believed money would make independent and 
enjoyable has for him only vagueness, uncer- 
tainty, and exploited dreams. 

Some sacrifice everything to their friends 
and trust in them very confidently. It is de- 
sirable to have friends. We were never in- 
tended to be solitary. God made us that He 
might set the solitary in families, that He 
might bring us together. By the contact and 
the friction of one man with another, human 
development has been accomplished. "As 
iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the countenance 
of a man his friend." It is only by intercom- 
munication, by intercourse, that our brain 
becomes active and the progress of society 
can be achieved. Friends mean much. 
They can minister to us in matters of social 
pleasure. They can entertain us in hours of 



112 



OUR ROCK 



loneliness. They can soothe us in sickness 
and aid us in weakness. The things friend- 
ship can do are almost countless. There have 
been men and women who have made friend- 
ship their rock. They have trusted their 
friends. They awoke from their false con- 
fidence when money and health were gone to 
discover that their friends had gone also. 
They found, when their disappointment was 
most depressing and their sorrow keenest, 
that their friends could not sympathize. 
There was only a sneer for their sighs and a 
laugh for their tears. When death came into 
their household, their friends could not help 
them. They lost their best beloved. All the 
conventional sentiments of friends who had 
never known so great a sorrow did not aid 
them at all to bear the burden of their great 
pain. Whatever man may make his rock 
other than God will disappoint and disappear 
in the day when defense and refreshment are 
most needed. 

In the present day, it is very popular to 
resort to certain methods of developing com- 
fort and strength, not from material, but from 
mental conditions. Many adopt Mathew 



OUR ROCK 



113 



Arnold's conception of Deity and speak of 
God as the power that makes for righteous- 
ness. The power that makes for righteous- 
ness is not a very strong rock. The religion 
that has no other thought of God than a 
vague power that makes for righteousness can- 
not give any idea of permanence, any con- 
ception of defense or any feeling of satisfac- 
tion. We have the religion of what is called 
pessimism. God made man bad, just bad as 
bad could be. Everything is bad and every- 
thing is getting worse. Buddhism is the ex- 
pression of pessimism in the religious world. 
It has been pictured as a great castle crowded 
with many devotees. Underneath the rocky 
height from which its battlements rise, the 
clouds are floating. The sun shines and 
transforms them with his golden splendor. 
The thought of the worshiper, as he looks 
down upon the misty glory, is that surely here 
is the best. In cloud-land is the purest. 
Man is bad. Humanity drifts from bad to 
worse. Therefore, in this ethereal realm is 
our ideal. The worshiper plunges from the 
battlement heights into the golden cloud only 
to fall through its vaporous veil on the rocks 

8 



114 



OUR ROCK 



in the valley below. Pessimism finds, at last, 
despair, utter and inexpressible. Theirs is a 
rock of clouds, only clouds. They seem very 
solid, and very beautiful beside the gray 
granite or the dark basalt that raise their 
rugged foreheads from the sand or the drifting 
soil. It is in the rock permanence is found, 
not in the cloud. It is behind the rock de- 
fense is found, not behind the cloud. It is 
from the rock satisfying refreshment comes 
continuously, and not from the cloud. There 
are other rocks men have made that are very 
popular. They are very like a real rock, so 
much so that they sometimes deceive the very 
elect. The devil has been making imitations 
since the world began. He ought to be a 
very good imitator of the genuine article by 
this time, and he is. Men who will not read 
their Bibles are frequently deceived by the 
appearance of permanence in some new plan 
of salvation, by the seeming strength of some 
new scheme for the race, by the apparent sat- 
isfaction in some misty description of blessed- 
ness. 

"Our Rock is not as their rock." We do 
not say so. Our enemies say so. If we said 



OUR ROCK 



115 



so it might be thought we were boasting. 
We allow our foes to say what they think of 
our Rock. The poet appeals to the Egyp- 
tians. "Ask Egypt what it thinks of our 
Rock. Ask Egypt's deities, its river, its 
beetles, its frogs and its flies. Ask Balaam 
and Balak, the son of Zippor, what they think 
of our Rock. These nations have their own 
rocks, the gods in whom they trust, whom 
they believe are permanent. Ask their opin- 
ion of ours, and see how even our enemies 
will bear witness to our Rock, Jehovah, God. 
Is not the memory of His power by our foes a 
criticism of our forgetfulness? Is not their 
testimony to the strength of our Rock the 
greatest of all condemnations of our doubt?" 
As it was then, it is now. Take the opinion 
even of the men who say there is no God and 
no such thing as real religion. Gibbon 
wrote his "Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire" that he might point out the supersti- 
tious character of Christianity, but Gibbon 
always went to church with great regularity. 
Why? Because Gibbon said if there was no 
such thing as religion the crowd could not 
be governed. In other words, while writing a 



116 



OUR ROCK 



book to discredit Christianity, he admitted 
Christianity was absolutely necessary to the 
maintenance of society and the progress of 
humanity. Mallock, in his book, "Is Life 
Worth Living?" where you have pessimism 
set forth in its most fascinating form, tells us 
if we take God and Christ out of life we have 
taken away the things that make most for 
true enjoyment. Thus our enemies become 
the best witnesses to the truth of our faith. 
Since these men admit so much, why is it 
they do not accept the Christian faith? Why 
is it that all men do not accept? Because it 
is possible for a man to know there is a God, 
a God of permanence, defense and satisfac- 
tion, yet not to love and live for Him. Preju- 
dice may prevent the consummation of a 
man's life and the filling out by faith of his 
intelligence. A desire for popularity that 
must be reached by dishonest and dishonor- 
able methods may lead him to prefer the rock 
of worldly success to the favor of the power 
or the person he knows is permanent, defen- 
sive and satisfying. Or it may be he is not 
willing to give over his whole personality to 
be permeated with the spirit of the highest. 



OUR ROCK 



117 



He may have some sensual pleasure, some 
appetite he knows he must give up if he fol- 
lows the dictates of his reason and accepts the 
Rock Jehovah as his Saviour and his God. 
Men who are opposed to us may, therefore, 
admit the reality of our defense, its perma- 
nence, its power, and its satisfying character, 
and yet they themselves may not accept its 
protection. Men are not wanting in self- 
interest. God often appeals to self-interest. 
You may say it is a low motive. Yes, but the 
Gospel is meant to appeal to the lowest man. 
God is often willing to begin His appeals by 
the simplest methods so that, having touched 
the lowest man, He may lift him up to the 
place where he is meet to be a comrade of the 
highest. Self-interest demands that we 
should have a rock that will not change, that 
will be strong enough for any foe in life or 
death, that will satisfy our heart in success or 
failure, in health or sickness, in society or in 
the loneliness of the sick-room. Self-interest 
demands such a defense. Will you, for the 
sake of prejudice, passion, or some imagin- 
ary success, sacrifice the possibility of making 
this Rock your Rock? In God alone will you 



118 



OUR ROCK 



find all you need — one who is immovable 
amid the changes of life, sufficient to defend 
from all the dangers of death, and to satisfy 
the mind's intelligence, the heart's emotions, 
and the soul's hopes. 

"Praise, my soul, the King of heaven; 
To His feet thy tribute bring; 
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, 
Who like me His praise should sing? 
Praise Him! Praise Him! 
Praise the Everlasting King. 

"Praise Him for His grace and favor 

To our fathers in distress; 
Praise Him still, the same forever, 

Slow to chide and swift to bless. 
Praise Him! Praise Him! 

Glorious in His faithfulness. 

*' Frail as summer's flower we flourish; 

Blows the wind and it is gone; 
But while mortals rise and perish, 

God endures unchanging on. 
Praise Him! Praise Him! 

Praise the High Eternal One. 



GOOD NEWS 



"Whene'er we meet you always say, 
What's the news? What's the news? 
Pray, what's the order of the day? 
What's the news? What's the news? 

"Oh! I have got good news to tell: 

My Saviour hath done all things well, 
And triumphed over Death and Hell. 
That's the news. That's the news." 



GOOD NEWS 



"As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news 
from a far country." 



This proverb expresses a universal expe- 
rience. Our circumstances may have been 
considerably modified by modern discoveries, 
but the truth embalmed in these words 
remains. The means of communication be- 
tween different countries has become so easy 
to-day, the question of intercourse with lands 
afar has lost much of its difficulty, and, there- 
fore, much of its inspiring character. This 
may be true in one aspect of modern life, 
but there is another side to this truth. In 
the Old World the means of communica- 
tion were restricted. There were no railroad 
trains. There were no steamboats. There 
was no telegraph. However, the desire to 
travel was much less. Very few people ever 
migrated from the spot where they were 
born. Therefore, but few in any eastern 



122 



GOOD NEWS 



community could enter into the significance 
of this proverb so fully as we can. Only an 
occasional family in Palestine had ever seen 
any of their children go away sufficiently far 
to be practically out of their sight. It was 
doubtless such isolated instances that sug- 
gested this proverb. To-day, the methods of 
communication having been simplified, the 
consequence is there is scarcely any one 
who has not a relative in some other land. 
There is hardly a family that is not scattered 
all over this country or around the world. 
There is not one, perhaps, who has not some- 
body they love severed from them by miles of 
earth -and leagues of sea. Consequently, 
while the means of communication may have 
been made much easier, the experience that in 
the old days was the experience of the few, 
has now practically become the experience of 
almost everybody, for everybody has some- 
body whom they know and love, and in whose 
life they are interested, separated from them 
by vast distances on our globe. 

The proverb appeals to a common condi- 
tion, a common need, a common want. We 
are anxious to know about those we love, 



GOOD NEWS 



123 



about the place where they are, about the 
things that they do. This is a true manifesta- 
tion of curiosity. When a man or woman 
becomes so old they have lost this sentiment 
of curiosity, they might as well die. They 
have become so callous or so cold they have 
no more questions to ask. They have lost all 
desire for knowledge. Surely, then, life is not 
worth living. It is possible for us to stifle our 
curiosity so that as our years increase our inter- 
est in life narrows, until at last we have no 
interest left at all. This proverb appeals to 
the universal desire to know about those we 
love. General curiosity is not limited merely 
to those we love. It manifests itself in 
the desire to know about lands where we 
have nobody we love, in the avidity with 
which we read the tales of travelers, in the 
interest with which we discuss the new condi- 
tions, the new vegetation, the new animals, 
the new customs of recently discovered 
countries. All these things appeal to us. 
We are ever on the watch for something new. 
When we obtain a new thing we are satisfied 
for the time being as a thirsty man is with a 
drink of water. 



124 



GOOD NEWS 



This desire to know is not limited to lands 
alone. There are other realms in which we 
manifest a similar emotion, a thirst, if you will. 
If we have no desire to know, of course, we 
will find no satisfaction in discovering the 
answers to certain questions. There is a 
world of intellect in which most of us have a 
desire for information. We want to know what 
is the truth on certain subjects. Of course, 
there are some men who have lost all desire 
to know the truth. Some are satisfied with 
lies. That is not the condition of the average 
man. "We have an intellectual thirst, we 
want to know, and when we find a truth that 
appeals to us it satisfies our brain as water 
satisfies our parched throat, and we are glad. 

This is true, also, in the realm of conscience. 
We wish to know what is right. There 
are a few men who do not care anything 
about right or wrong, but they are not aver- 
age men, they are not ordinary men. The 
average man does want to know what is right. 
He does not always do it. The fact that he 
does not always do it has by no means des- 
troyed his desire to know it. When the aver- 
age man finds out what is right, his. 



GOOD NEWS 



125 



conscience is satisfied, just as much as his 
parched tongue is gratified with a drink of 
water. 

The heart is ever anxious for something to 
rely upon, something upon which it can 
depend. The affections have been so often 
misplaced one questions whether there is 
anything worth loving at all that will last. 
When a man finds anything in the heaven 
above or the earth beneath upon which he can 
fix his emotions and realize that he has found 
something lovable, the love of which will con- 
tinue and perhaps grow, he has found for his 
heart a satisfaction as delightful as the pleas- 
ure brought to the parched throat or the 
swollen tongue by sparkling water. 

There is thirst everywhere. Few men are 
without it. It is true we find some men who 
are not interested in truth, some men who are 
not interested in right, some men who are not 
interested in love. It may be they have not 
yet found out their need of them. "As cold 
water to a thirsty man." But if a man is not 
thirsty, cold water is nothing to him. There 
is nothing more tasteless than cold water to 
one who is not thirsty. One who is not 



126 



GOOD NEWS 



thirsty must have something that appeals to 
the palate more than water does to bring him 
any satisfaction or pleasure. But if he is really 
thirsty, there is nothing he craves for so much 
as water. Men are often talked to about 
great truths. They have never yet been puzzled 
about these important things. Therefore, 
the splendid solution is altogether uninterest- 
ing. The great revelation of some mystery of 
life is to them as insipid as water to a man 
who is not thirsty. 

Men who have never experienced the con- 
flict between the temptation to do wrong 
and the desire to do right, and who have 
only drifted with a Christian home, a Chris- 
tian community, and the Christian convention- 
alities, are shown the right and the desir- 
ability of doing it; the matter is to them 
but insipid talk, as tasteless as a mouthful 
of water to a man whose thirst has been 
satisfied. 

You note how apt is this symbol of the old 
proverb-writer. We must be thirsty before we 
can find the satisfaction that is to be found in 
cold water. We must be thirsty before we can 
find the satisfaction that may be found in any 



GOOD NEWS 



127 



sphere of life. Therefore did the Master him- 
self say that "they who hunger and thirst 
after righteousness shall be filled." Many 
men do not hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness. They are not as anxious as a dying 
man for water, to know what is right, and, of 
course, they are not filled. The discovery of 
right is to them as uninteresting and insipid 
as a glass of water to a man whose thirst has 
been thoroughly satiated. 

We are athirst at one time for one thing 
and at another time for another. If the 
wrong thing be presented to us, the thing for 
which we are not athirst, it is to us uninter- 
esting. At the same moment, however, there 
may be an ardent desire in our hearts for 
the explanation of some other truth, or 
our conscience may be wishing for a reve- 
lation of the Tightness of some other course 
of conduct. 

This universal need applies in the high- 
est sense to the spiritual sphere. What 
is it makes us so feverish we are always 
thirsty? It is our anxiety about to-morrow. 
This creates the restlessness that drives us 
hither and thither, begets worry, and devel- 



128 



GOOD NEWS 



ops into weariness. This feverish condi- 
tion of the soul must be modified. This 
trouble about the future in this world must 
be satisfied. There is not only the anxiety 
about to-morrow in this world; there is 
the anxiety about the endless to-morrow, 
about what immortality will bring to us, 
what there is in that far-off land beyond the 
grave. The mysteries and uncertainties of 
the hereafter keep us in a fever of excitement. 
We question whether there be such a land at 
all, or whether it be only a fable land, a world 
of dreams and shadows. There are the puz- 
zling questions as to who are there and what 
the place is like. This is a natural thirst. There 
is nothing about which we should be so anxious 
as about the future. We ought to wish to 
know what this life all means and how it is 
going to end. Where shall we find answers to 
satisfy our desires on such important questions? 

It is significant that this very word, ''good 
news," is the equivalent of the word used in 
the message of the angel: "Behold, I bring 
you good tidings of great joy." He brought 
good news — good news, which is to the hearts 
of men and to the minds of men and to the 



SOOD NEWS 



129 



consciences of men as refreshing as a glass of 
water to a thirsty soul. The metaphor of 
water is the great metaphor of both the Old 
Testament and the New. "My soul thirst- 
eth for God, the living God," says the 
poet of the Old Testament. Jesus Christ, on 
that great day of the feast, the last day, cried 
with a loud voice, and said: "If any man 
thirst, let him come unto me and drink." 
One of the characteristics of the symbol- 
ism of the land of perfection, as pictured 
in the Book of the Revelation, is the abun- 
dance of water. There shall be no more 
thirsting. The thoughts, desires, and con- 
science of the race shall be completely satis- 
fied. This significant proverb is, therefore, 
easily applicable in the widest and grandest 
sense to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The 
only satisfaction that will be sufficient for our 
head, our conscience, and our heart, is Jesus 
Christ himself. He is the water of which, if 
any man drink, he shall never thirst. He is 
the answer to all the problems life presents. 
He is the solution of all the puzzles of divine 
providence. In Him, and in Him only, can 
we find all we need. 

9 



130 



GOOD NEWS 



Water is a necessity, and it is one of the 
commonest things we know. Very few peo- 
ple in civilized lands to-day ever knew what it 
was to be nearly dead of thirst. With the 
people in the land where this proverb was 
born such an experience was more common. 
Surrounded with deserts, taking long jour- 
neys, where the water-bottle was the most 
important thing to attend to, sometimes in 
extremity, when they were dying with the 
desert sand parching their throat and the 
desert sun burning their brain, they would try 
to find in their camel some water he might 
have preserved for his long trip across the 
waste. To us this experience cannot come 
home with the same significance as to the 
Orientals. Water is to us so abundant and 
so commonplace we forget we could not 
live without it. We have never been placed 
in a position to realize in our own life how 
absolutely necessary it is to existence. Some- 
what of the force of the proverb is, therefore, 
lost for us. But though in the material 
sphere we have never been placed in a posi- 
tion where we realized the absolute necessity 
of water to our maintenance, there is no 



GOOD NEWS 



131 



man or woman who has not been in a posi- 
tion where they realized that something out- 
side of themselves was absolutely necessary to 
their preservation in this life and their secur- 
ity in the life to come. We are born into this 
world helpless. As we grow older we become 
conscious that we are dependent upon those 
about us. We are not so in our babyhood, 
nor even in our childhood. But when we 
begin to think seriously we gradually discover 
how dependent we are upon our parents and 
our community. Brought up in society with 
many things that contribute toward our sus- 
tenance, we find it difficult to eliminate from 
our life everything other people have put into 
it to make it livable. We cannot think our- 
selves back into barbarism. We cannot sup- 
pose ourselves born and nurtured in the wilds 
of an African forest. We cannot realize the 
experience of being thrown utterly and en- 
tirely upon our own resources for everything 
necessary to the maintenance of our life. 
But while we cannot enter into this experi- 
ence as regards material things, we are com- 
pelled to pass through something like this 
experience in regard to spiritual things. 



132 



GOOD NEWS 



However much other people may help us in 
the maintenance of our physical life, when it 
comes to our heart and its desires, to our 
mind and its perplexities, to our conscience 
and its problems, they can do but little for us. 
They may help a little way in explaining the 
mystery, but it is only a little way. Human- 
ity is utterly unable to impart to the soul that 
is wrestling with some question in its own life 
the true answer. We must have somebody 
not only outside of ourselves, but wiser than 
ourselves and better than ourselves, to help 
us in the solution of our problems. Such a 
personality can only be found in Jesus Christ. 
He alone is able to satisfy us as to what we 
ought to know, as to what we ought to do, as 
to whom we ought to love. We come to Him 
and we find in Him a satisfaction that gives 
us strength as water gives strength to a faint- 
ing man and makes him fit to travel on in 
vigor to his journey's end. 

Water is a great refreshment. It is essen- 
tial to life, but it is more — it is an inspiration. 
A man may live with a few drops, sufficient to 
maintain his bodily condition of vitality, but 
he will not have enough energy to be happy. 



GOOD NEWS 133 

He will not have enough life to be enthusi- 
astic. He will not have enough strength to 
be energetic. The main thought here may be 
not so much the necessity of water to the 
maintenance of life as the fact that there is 
nothing refreshes the weary so much, nothing 
is so successful in giving an inspiration that 
enables travelers to start again and struggle 
with their difficulty, whatever it be. In the 
weariness of life men need most an inspira- 
tion. Every week we are weary. We go 
down into the world, which is our wilderness; 
we struggle; our throats get parched; we are 
athirst for something that will refresh us. 
Our religion is tested — sometimes rudely 
tested in our ordinary daily tasks. When the 
struggle is over, we need some refreshment, 
something that will enable us to rest and 
begin again — begin again, not with less 
enthusiasm, but with more; begin again, not 
with less energy, but with more; begin again, 
not having lost any of our religious vision, but 
having increased and intensified it. 

A man whose friends are in a far land feels 
his loneliness. He gets weary in the struggle 
of life. He says to himself: ''What's the use 



134 



GOOD NEWS 



of my making such an effort to succeed? I 
have nobody for whom to work but myself; I 
have nobody to whom to leave the result of 
my labors." If such a man hears about some 
son or brother in a distant land, his whole 
attitude toward existence is altered. Before 
the message came his hands hung down, his 
knees were feeble. He felt and said it was no 
use struggling with life. But immediately the 
news comes that they are alive and well and 
thinking about him, he bends to his task with 
new enthusiasm, attacks it with greater vigor, 
puts into it more energy, and achieves suc- 
cess. Before he had been almost an utter 
failure; now he begins again, having received 
a new inspiration, and accomplishes much for 
others and for himself. We must have some- 
thing to work for. There are very few people 
who can work just for themselves. There are 
exceptions. The average man, however, if 
he has nobody to work for but himself, very 
soon tires. He says: "What's the use? The 
struggle is too hard, the irritations too great, 
the thirst too trying. I will stop and be 
done." If it is so in our material work, it is 
still more so in our spiritual activities. There 



GOOD NEWS 



135 



we must have help if we are to accomplish 
anything. Many things give us help. There 
is the thought that this world is not the end 
of our efforts and our energies. It will bring 
refreshment to a thirsting soul about to give 
up to remember that this life is not the end of 
character-building. The hard task they have 
to do is the making of them. It seems diffi- 
cult, but it is in the solution of difficulties 
strength is developed. It is in the wrestle with 
the problems of life we find the pleasures of 
sublime satisfaction. We need some news of 
the land beyond if v/e are to make the most of 
this life. "As cold water to a thirsty soul, so 
is good news from a far country. ' ' We have 
news, important news. We have news that 
our Father is there, and that ought to bring 
great satisfaction. We are living and work- 
ing so that we may be fit to be with our 
Father in that land afar. We have news that 
our Brother is there, even Jesus Christ him- 
self. No one can enter into sympathy with 
our struggles, our thirsting in this world, as 
He can. We have news that those we love 
are there. It is a most refreshing thought. 
Before Christ came, there were very dim con- 



136 



GOOD NEWS 



ceptions of where the loved and lost had gone. 
Since Christ's resurrection we have news from 
that far land, news that to our hearts is more 
refreshing than ever draught of sparkling 
water to a fainting wayfarer on the desert 
sands. News, good news! God is in that 
land afar; Christ is in that land afar; our 
loved ones are in that land afar; surely, that 
should suffice to support us in our day of 
weakness and make us worthy to be with God 
and His Christ, and all whom we have loved 
and lost a while. 

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news 
about a far land, but it is good news 
of a special kind. Most men are athirst 
for forgiveness. Conscience says we de- 
serve to be punished. Justice tells us that 
if we had the power we would punish every 
man who had hurt us, who had sinned against 
us. We cannot think of a God, who must be 
infinitely just, dealing with us in a different 
way from that in which we would fain deal 
with those who have wronged us. We can- 
not picture to ourselves by any manner of 
imagining a God who would be willing to do 
to us what we would not be willing to do to 



GOOD NEWS 



137 



any other mortal, were we God. We must 
have some information from this far land that 
will give our conscience rest on this perplex- 
ing question. The great central thought of 
the revelation of God is the good news that 
your sins and mine can be forgiven through 
Christ Jesus. We who were bowed down by 
fear, whose throats were parched and whose 
hearts had failed, can now be strengthened by 
a drink from the life-giving stream that 
gushes forth from Calvary. Forgiveness, 
brought from that far land, and brought by 
the sublimest messenger, is the news by 
which our lives can be refreshed, our souls 
renewed, our problems solved, and ourselves 
fitted to begin again with new enthusiasm 
to do life's duties and discharge life's respon- 
sibilities. 

One of the great artists of the ages painted 
a picture of Jesus on His mother's knee, 
while from beneath the chair on which 
she sits, there flows a fountain. Around 
the fountain were set huge slabs of 
marble. About the great opening in which 
the water gathered, the apostles and the 
martyrs stooped and drank of the bright, 



138 



GOOD NEWS 



flowing flood. Over the marble edges of the 
artificial basin, the abundant supply surges 
and falls down over terrace after terrace, until 
it reaches the low meadowland and runs along 
through the landscape. In the level country 
there are no banks, no ornamentation, and no 
throngs of celebrities to interfere with the 
approach of any. The children come and 
stoop down, amid the buttercups and daisies, 
and dip their little^ hands into the flood and 
drink and are satisfied. Such is a fitting 
picture of the good news from the far land. 
The water of life that God has sent to quench 
the thirst of every living soul is abundant and 
easily obtained. Even the thirst of the little 
children may find in Christ all that their inno- 
cent souls require to refresh them as they 
play in the meadows of life, knowing nothing 
yet of its grim deserts and its parching by- 
ways. 

Are you thirsty? If you are, Jesus Christ 
can satisfy your thirst. Is He uninterest- 
ing to you? Then the reason lies in your- 
self. Have you had no problems to solve as 
to the difference between right and wrong? 
There are few men or women who, in their 



GOOD NEWS 



139 



ordinary daily tasks, are not compelled to 
confront this difficulty — to wonder what it 
would be right for them to do. Many are 
unable to work because they worry over this 
question of right and wrong. Their con- 
science is either not educated enough to 
decide, or their emotions and their conscience 
are at variance. They wish to do a certain 
thing, and their conscience warns them not. 
In such a struggle, how the soul grows 
feverish, how the life becomes weary, and 
we faint like the desert traveler. If such 
has been your experience, if it is your experi- 
ence now, come to Jesus. He will satisfy 
your thirst as nothing else can. He will set 
you right and keep you right, and enable you 
to understand the right all the way through 
life's journey. 

You may have something that you love. 
Your heart may be satisfied for the moment. 
Therefore, you have no thirst for a better 
lover; for a grander, more permanent, and 
inexhaustible affection. So long as we can 
find enough to drink in the pools, we will 
not seek the stream. So long as we can 
catch enough in a cistern, we will not 



140 



GOOD NEWS 



seek the fountain. Our life so often con- 
sists in loving this for a while, then loving 
that, being constant to none or to nothing, 
until the years of youthful enthusiasm have 
flown and we have lost the power to love in 
the highest and best sense. Our emotions 
have become calloused. We cannot find any- 
thing to love but ourselves. Our heart shrivels 
up and our life becomes parched. The cistern 
is cracked. The sun has exhausted the pools. 
Where before we found enough to satisfy, 
there is not a drop of moisture now. It is in 
such a moment Jesus Christ comes to our 
relief as the living water of God, the good 
news from the far land. He will not despise 
us, though we have rejected Him for years. 
He is divine, not human. In the sweet sim- 
plicity, the unique humility, the changeless 
devotion of His glorious personality, He will 
come and beget in us affection and we shall 
love Him because He first loved us. His life 
shall be a refreshment to our life, even as 
water to the parched throat of the dying 
traveler. We shall be made strong in Him- 
self; strong for duty in all its manifold mani- 
festations; strong to see the right, and, seeing 



GOOD NEWS 



141 



it, to do it; strong to love with a love death 
itself cannot destroy. 

"I hear thee speak of the Better Land; 
Thou call'st its children a happy band. 
Mother! oh, where is the radiant shore? 
Shall we not seek it and weep no more? 
Is it where the flower of the orange grows 
And the fire-flies dance through the myrtle boughs? 
Not there, not there, my child. 

"Is it where the feathery palm-trees rise 
And the date grows ripe under sunny skies; 
Or midst the green islands of glittering seas, 
Where fragrant forests perfume the breeze, 
And strange, bright birds on their starry wings 
Bear the rich hues of all glorious things? 
Not there, not there, my child. 

"Is it far away in some region old, 
Where rivers wander o'er sands of gold; 
Where the burning rays of the ruby shine, 
And the diamond lights up the secret mine, 
And the pearl gleams forth from the coral strand 
Is it there, sweet mother, that Better Land? 
Not there, not there, my child. 

"Eye hath not seen it, my gentle boy; 
Ear hath not heard its deep songs of joy; 
Dreams cannot picture a world so fair; 
Sorrow and death cannot enter there; 
Time may not breathe on its fadeless bloom; 
Far beyond the clouds and beyond the tomb, 
It is there, it is there, my child." 



MAN'S WANT 



"There's not a flower can grow upon the earth 
Without a flower upon the spiritual side: 
All that we see is pattern of what shall be in the 
mount, 

Related royally, and built up to eterne significance. 

There's nothing small: 
No lily-muffled hum of summer bee 
But finds its coupling in the spinning stars; 
No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere; 
No chaffinch but implies a cherubim. 

Earth is full of heaven, 
And every common bush a fire with God." 



MAN'S WANT 



"No man hath seen God at any time." 



The great want of man throughout all the 
ages has been a sight of God. The apostle 
tells us how God has compensated man for 
this want by sending "the only begotten 
Son," and the method of compensation is 
described as declarative: "He hath declared." 

There is throughout nature a law of compen- 
sation. Our own experience gives evidence 
of its existence. If we lose one sense we 
develop greater power in the senses that are 
left. If we lose the sense of sight, the sense 
of hearing and the sense of touch become 
much more acute. Thus, in the development 
of these other senses, there is some compensa- 
tion for the sense that has been lost. The same 
principle runs all through nature. Here we find 
this principle revealed in the higher realm of 
spirit. We cannot see God, but we are com- 
pensated by the declaration of Jesus Christ. 

10 145 



146 



man's want 



"No man hath seen God at any time." 
This has been the desire of the ages. It was 
declared by Job, expressed by Moses, again 
and again repeated in the Psalms, and reiter- 
ated in different forms by the prophets. The 
great difficulty with the ancients was to form 
a conception of a God who had no figure and 
no dwelling-place. To-day we can under- 
stand God a great deal better than ever the 
world could understand him before, yet we 
have to deal with the very same difficulty. 
The desire of most men is to locate God. in 
some given spot and to conceive of God in 
some given shape. 

In the Old Testament there are a number of 
statements that seem to run counter to this 
one. We are told God walked in the garden 
in the cool of the day and talked with Adam. 
Again, in the Book of Exodus, it is said: 
"They saw the God of Israel and there was 
under His feet, as it were, a paved work of 
sapphire stone. " Again, Isaiah says: "In the 
year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the 
Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted 
up, and His train filled the temple," and he 
repeats: "I have seen the Lord of Hosts." 



man's want 



147 



How, then, do we reconcile these state- 
ments with this emphatic announcement that 
"no man hath seen God at any time?" for this 
announcement is as comprehensive as human- 
ity — no man, not even Adam, not even 
Moses, not even Isaiah. The statement is 
not only as comprehensive as humanity, but 
as extensive as history. If we translated the 
Greek more literally, it would run: "Godhead 
hath never yet been seen by any man." 
What, then, is the significance of these state- 
ments in the Old Testament? We can find 
them best explained, perhaps, by taking the 
statement in Isaiah which this same apostle 
quotes a little later in his gospel and applies 
to Jesus. John says: "These things saith 
Esaias, when he saw His glory and spake of 
Him." This application of the prophet's 
statement by the apostle implies that God the 
Father was never seen, but that from the ear- 
liest ages God the Son was the expression of 
the unseen Father. It makes no difference 
what clothes I wear; I am the same person. 
I may be dressed in Chinese costume, but it 
does not change my personality. Jesus Christ 
is the revealer of the Father, whether He 



148 



MAN S WANT 



comes draped in the Oriental symbolism of 
the Old Testament, or in the more common- 
place life of a carpenter in the New. He is 
the same blessed personality, the compensa- 
tion for the invisible Father, the Revealer of 
the Unseen. It was Jesus, therefore, whom 
they saw. He is the ideal of the race in all 
ages, though the description of the vision may 
be laden with Oriental imagery, which we 
often misinterpret and misapply. 

God is always the same, but man is not 
always the same. God has not changed, but 
the conception of the unseen God has 
changed from the beginning of the ages until 
now. Each generation has seen God for 
itself, and it has seen Him from a stand- 
point different from that of any other 
generation that preceded it. Therefore, I 
say we, as a generation, can see God better 
than any generation ever could before. 

There are two elements essential to the 
vision of God. The one is the ability of God 
to make himself known; the other is the 
capacity of man to see Him. I may have a 
picture painted by one of the greatest artists 
in the world. The artist had the idea he ex- 



man's want 



149 



pressed in this picture in his brain. He had 
not only the idea in his brain, but he had the 
power to exercise his fingers so that he could 
put his idea upon the canvas. If I have no 
conception of painting, I can see no idea 
there. The canvas might as well be oilcloth. 
If I had my way I would be as likely to use it 
for a door-mat as for an ornament on the wall 
of my house. In order that I may compre- 
hend the artist's thought, there must be not 
only a conception on the part of the artist 
that he can express, but there must also be in 
me a capacity to understand what the artist 
has expressed. The same thing is true in all 
directions. A man may see a truth and be 
able to put it into words, words the simplest 
and the clearest, but other men may be so 
bound up with sense, so controlled by their 
animal nature, they cannot perceive the truth 
and have no capacity to grasp it. The diffi- 
culty lies not with the man who had the 
talent to think the great thought and the 
greater talent to give it clear and plain utter- 
ance. It lies in the men who have lost the 
capacity to grasp the thought when it is ex- 
pressed in language of the plainest. So with 



150 



man's want 



the revelation of God in the olden time. He 
was anxious to make Himself comprehensible 
to the nations of antiquity. He adopted all 
sorts of methods. He resorted to a kind of 
spiritual kindergarten. He consented to be 
manifested in certain forms that enabled them 
to comprehend His reality and His power. 
But in the New Testament He has adopted a 
different method. Instead of being revealed 
in an ideal personality, glimpses of whom 
were caught by gifted seers at long-distant 
periods, in strange and mysterious emblems, 
or in symbols like the clearness of the heaven, 
He now makes Himself known in a man. 
This man is the manifestation of spirit. God 
is never called spirit in the Old Testament. 
It is the revelation of the New, that God is 
spirit. In the Old Testament He is said to be 
possessed of a spirit like a man, to have the 
same characteristics men possess, but His 
essence is never expressed as spirit. This 
conception the Old Testament prophets and 
poets do not seem to have reached. Jesus 
Christ alone makes this mysterious revelation 
of God plain to humanity. It is impossible to 
see spirit. The Jews and the old patriarchs 



man's want 



151 



had no conception of God as spirit; therefore, 
they needed something they could see and 
locate. Jesus comes to us and says: "God is 
spirit." Such a declaration should destroy all 
desire for visibility, for spirit cannot be seen 
by the natural eye, and cannot be located in 
the sense in which a body can be located in a 
given spot at a given time. No man can see 
God, or, as Paul puts it, He is a being ''whom 
no man hath seen or can see." 

Is it not unfortunate that we should have to 
worship a God whom no man hath seen or 
can see? But do we not find in nature analo- 
gies that help us to appreciate this necessity? 
Is not nature pointing us ever toward the 
great truth that the unseen is the real, and 
the seen is the changeable and the perishable? 
This old world seems to be the same old 
world, but it is not. The leaves are not the 
same this year that were on the tree last year. 
The tree itself has changed the particles that 
form its substance. The surface of the earth 
has been worn by wind and water, and by the 
appliances of man. Everything that is on the 
surface of the world is different to-day from 
what it ever was before. But some unseen 



152 



man's want 



force, some invisible quality, holds the old 
world together and makes it a continuous 
thing. As it is with the world, so it is with 
ourselves. No man hath seen himself at any 
time. No man hath seen his neighbor at any 
time. Even if we had seen ourselves or our 
neighbor at any time, we never saw the same 
vision twice. There is something in us, as in 
the universe, that is permanent, but the per- 
manent thing is unseen. What the perma- 
nent thing is we cannot exactly tell. It has 
never been found by any chemical test. It 
has never been discovered by any microscopi- 
cal examination. We know, however, it is 
there. A man meets a friend whom he has not 
seen for twenty years. He is delighted to see 
him. He talks as if it was the same body he 
had addressed before, but it is not. The 
whole body has changed. There is not a par- 
ticle in the substance of the friend to whom 
he speaks the same as was there when he 
knew him twenty years before. The old 
theory used to be that we changed every atom 
of our body in seven years, but now the 
scientists tell us that in a year or two at most 
our whole physical form has been altered. 



man's want 



153 



The various parts have worn off every day 
piece by piece, and new pieces been supplied 
until it is an entirely new body that moves 
round. They go still farther and tell us now 
that the action of the heart, which is so con- 
stant and exercises such an immense force to 
drive the blood into the extremities of our 
bodies, wears out in sixty days. Every sixty 
days the muscle that thus contracts and ex- 
pands is renewed. Every sixty days we have 
a different heart. And yet, though we know 
that we are thus changing rapidly, there is 
something in us we cannot see, and have 
never seen, that remains a permanent quan- 
tity. Even so, God is in nature the unseen 
and the permanent, whom we have never seen 
and never can see. 

No man has seen God at any time, nor ever 
can see him, because of what He is in Him- 
self. We say God is infinite. What do we 
mean by that? We simply mean He is 
not finite; that is, He is not like us. But that 
does not give us any conception of anything. 
It is a negation, and a mere negation does not 
illumine truth. We have not any word that 
can express the thought of God's infinity, 



154 



man's want 



We can only say, "He is not like us; He is not 
finite; He is not limited." We cannot com- 
prehend infinity. No more can we under- 
stand eternity. We cannot think of a being 
that had no beginning. We may be able to 
think of a being that has no end, but we can- 
not think of no beginning. A deaf and dumb 
child was once asked what was the meaning 
of eternity, and she wrote upon the black- 
board: "God's lifetime." That is all we 
know about it. We cannot form any con- 
ception of it; we cannot intellectually see it. 
We can take up God's attributes, one by one, 
and show that it is impossible to see Him 
intellectually, to comprehend Him, to know 
Him. But is it not the same with the attri- 
butes of man? The analogy holds good. 
There is, therefore, nothing to complain 
about if we cannot see God. Who ever saw 
memory? Memory is an attribute of mine as 
much as eternity is an attribute of God. 
Who ever saw imagination? Imagination is 
an illimitable characteristic of mine, for it 
seems boundless in its sweep. No man ever 
saw it. It is an unseeable quantity. So it is 
with all the attributes of man, even as it is 



man's want 



155 



with the attributes of God. Therefore, the 
fact that we cannot see God is only a carry- 
ing out of the analogies of nature into a 
higher sphere, and leading us to realize that 
the permanent thing cannot be seen. In the 
sense of His eternity and His infinity, God is 
not only unseen by man, but He is not seen 
by angels, for Godhead cannot be under- 
stood by anything less than itself. The 
absolute reality must, therefore, ever remain 
the great unseen. This want of man is not a 
want, therefore, that is at variance with our 
ordinary experience. 

Some think science says: "If you can- 
not see God, why worship Him?" Does 
science say so? The business of science 
is to deal with facts, with things that can be 
seen. But science does more than merely 
deal with facts. It deals with qualities, rela- 
tions, and forces. No one ever saw a quality, 
a relation, or a force. Science discusses elec- 
tricity and gravitation. No one ever saw 
either of them. Without gravitation the 
theories of science would fall to pieces at 
once. The science that is most accurate talks 
of what it is pleased to call the ether, the 



156 



man's want 



impalpable ether. It tells us all space is 
filled with this unseen element. But no 
scientist ever saw it. It is as invisible as 
gravitation or electricity. Science has no 
right to raise any objection to our dealing 
with an unseen God when science itself 
mainly exists to discuss the relationships and 
characteristics of unseen things. Therefore, 
in this statement of the apostle, "No man 
hath seen God at any time," he is expressing 
a truth that belongs not to the high and holy 
realm of religion alone, but permeates every 
sphere of existence and touches every variety 
of personal and scientific experience. 

More, no man can see God because of His 
unique splendor and grandeur. The Jews 
themselves recognized this. The rabbis did 
not interpret these statements of the Old 
Testament about seeing God as we do. 
When they talked of God they always spoke 
of Him as a God who could not be seen. 
They emphasized the statement God made to 
Moses: "There can no man see me and live." 
When one of their great representatives was 
introduced to Trajan, the Roman emperor, 
and they discussed the question of God, the 



man's want 



157 



emperor said to the rabbi: "You say your God 
is everywhere. Show me Him. Let me see 
Him." The rabbi answered: "Will Your 
Majesty walk out with me into the palace 
yard?" They walked out together into the 
great marble-paved court where the sun shone 
down in all its Italian splendor upon the mag- 
nificent city. The rabbi said to the emperor: 
"Will Your Majesty look at the sun?" The 
emperor replied: "I cannot. He is too 
bright. He would blind me." The rabbi 
quickly retorts: "If Your Majesty cannot look 
at the sun, who is one of my God's messen- 
gers, how could you bear to look at my God 
himself?" The rabbi's reasoning was correct. 
We cannot look upon God. He keeps Him- 
self unseen because the vision would be a 
vision dreadful that would destroy us by its 
splendor and stupendous grandeur. The 
statement, "No man hath seen God," is, 
therefore, not merely an expression of human 
want; it is a confession of divine love. Man 
may want what would kill him. The vision 
of God would destroy the race. God is sub- 
lime, pure, holy, and spiritual, and because of 
His love for humanity He refuses to gratify 
humanity's want. 



158 



man's want 



How do we know there is a God if we can- 
not see Him? How do we know there is 
electricity? We cannot see it. No man ever 
saw it. How did Newton discover gravita- 
tion? He did not see it. Nobody ever has 
seen it. Therefore, although we cannot see 
God, we have no difficulty in realizing His ex- 
istence. We know there is such a thing as 
the world without us. We do not believe this 
world is eternal. In other words, we do not 
think it possible that the atoms of which the 
world is composed made themselves. It is 
just as difficult to make one atom out of 
which a world can come as it would be to 
make the world as we see it to-day. It is just 
as difficult to make one acorn out of which an 
oak can grow as it is to make an oak a hun- 
dred years old. The scientific statements 
putting back the making of the world millions 
and millions of eons does not have any effect 
upon the idea of God. It is as difficult to 
make an atom, a molecule, or a monad — call 
it by what name you may — in which there will 
be the possibilities of the present world as it 
would be to make the world as it is now. The 
modern method of dealing with matter does 



MAN S WANT 



159 



not imply that matter could create itself. 
Even the theory of a fortuitous concourse of 
atoms, which implies no law, must recognize 
the beginning of law sometime and some- 
where. These laws themselves are unseen 
quantities. Even if matter could make itself; 
that is to say, if a lump of clay could cause 
itself, it could not set itself amoving. Inert, 
dead, motionless matter cannot begin to 
move. There must be something in it or 
about it or above it that will give it a start. 
Therefore, we believe that things as they are, 
even if they were motionless, demand an 
unseen originator whom we call God, and that 
the movements about us and in us are evi- 
dences of a force that can give the first 
impetus and control and direct all things. 

Again, we feel that motion does not make 
life. This age has reached an advanced stage 
in mechanics. We can make things move 
with marvelous rapidity. But who ever 
thought that even if they could discover per- 
petual motion and make the revolutions as 
rapid as the vibrations of light, that by the 
rapidity of motion they could create life? 
We are alive and we believe that this unseen 



160 



man's want 



thing in us we call life is neither a matter of 
its own creation nor a development of 
motion, and that, therefore, there must be in 
this universe and about it and above it a God 
whom no man can see. He must be in it all 
and over it all and through it all. This 
thought the Jews could not master. This 
thought made our own old theologians blun- 
der. They conceived of God as a mechanic 
who created a great machine, and who sat 
away far off upon His throne unseen some- 
where in His universe and watched the 
machine go. We believe that the unseen 
God is in the machine. You may call my 
body a machine. My life is in the machine. 
My life may go out of the body. It will leave 
the machine, and the machine will soon dis- 
integrate. We believe to-day not in a God 
who is only transcendent over all, but in a 
God who is immanent in all. Yet He is not 
in all in such a sense as to destroy will or 
make matter divine. He is in all in the sense 
that all things in your life and in my life, in 
the nation's movements, in the earth's devel- 
opment, work out His purposes and perfect 
His plan. This was the great revelation of 



MAN S WANT 



161 



Christ. God was everywhere, in everything. 
His very unseenness was a necessity of His 
constant presence everywhere, influencing the 
individual, influencing society, influencing the 
universe for the accomplishment of His pur- 
poses. My life is in my body, yet my life is 
not my body. It is in every part of my body. 
It is in my little finger as much as in my 
brain. I can cut off my little finger and it will 
lose its life, but my body as a whole will not 
die. What that life is that is in my body, I 
cannot tell. I cannot define it. I cannot 
even describe it. How it can be in every part 
of me and yet not be a part of me, I cannot 
understand; but that it is there, and yet is no 
part of my body, is a self-evident fact that 
comes home to me again and again. I see the 
same truth evidenced in others whose bodies 
remain when the life has gone out of them. 
God is in everything, just as my life is in 
every part of me. Yet that does not mean that 
God is everything. This is an important 
distinction. The tendency to-day is toward 
pantheism — to believe God is in every- 
thing, and, therefore, all responsibility is 

destroyed. The fact that God is in every- 
11 



162 



man's want 



thing, as my life is in me, and yet that God 
is no part of everything, as my life is no 
part of my body, is a great satisfaction to 
the believer. If God be in everything, it is 
impossible for me to see Him, for He is in 
me as well as in everything else. There- 
fore, there is no hardship in the announce- 
ment that "No man hath seen God or can see 
Him." 

But while no man hath seen God or can 
see Him, we have a manifestation of Him 
in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ hath revealed 
Him to us — revealed Him in all the loveliness 
of His fatherhood, in all the beauty and 
sweetness of His forgiveness, in all the in- 
finite height and depth and length and breadth 
of His love. We are without excuse. This 
want of ours is no reason for refusing to 
know, serve, and worship a God we cannot 
see. The sublime characteristic of the 
Christian religion is that God can be wor- 
shiped without physical forms or local sacred 
spots. God is in everything; He is every- 
where, and His worship, like His love, is lim- 
itless and may be rendered by any man, in 
any place, at any time. We need no images; 



man's want 



163 



we need no pictures; we need no ritual; we 
need nothing but the desire to talk with God 
and the consciousness of the presence of God, 
to make the worship of the unseen a real, ac- 
ceptable, beneficial, and blessed experience 
anywhere and always. Although "No man 
hath seen God at any time," yet the race can- 
not find in this want any apology for its god- 
lessness, any excuse for its agnosticism. God 
has met man's want more than half way and 
has come down Himself in the likeness of sin- 
ful flesh, so that in man He might show man 
what God meant man to be. 

"Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with 
spirit can meet; 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands 
and feet. 

"God is law, say the wise; O soul, and let us rejoice, 
For if He thunder by law, the thunder is yet in His 
voice. 

"Law is God, say some; not God at all, says the fool; 
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent 
in a pool. 

"And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man 
cannot see; 

But if we could see and hear this vision— were it not 
He?" 



IDOLATRY 



"Dear God and Father of us all, 
Forgive our faith in cruel lie; 
Forgive the blindness that denies; 
Forgive Thy creature when he takes 
For the all-perfect love Thou art 
Some grim creation of his heart. 
Cast down our idols; overturn 
Our bloody altars: let us see 
Thyself in Thy humanity." 



IDOLATRY 



"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." 



If we translated literally, these words 
might be rendered: "My children, guard your- 
selves from the idols." If we take the books 
of the New Testament in the order in which 
they are supposed to have been written, this 
epistle of John is the final one. These words 
are, therefore, among the last words of the 
last apostle. 

There was a special necessity, perhaps, for 
such a charge to the Christians at Ephesus. 
It was pre-eminently an idolatrous city, the 
center of the worship of the great Diana. 
Into every part of the social and commercial 
life of the place idolatrous customs had woven 
themselves. Therefore, the apostle says to 
the church at Ephesus: "My children, guard 
yourselves from the idols." 

Idolatry is a tendency of the race. Man 
has the instinct for worship. You find the 
167 



168 



IDOLATRY 



instinct manifested everywhere. It has 
nothing to do with education. It has nothing 
to do with civilization. It is as evident 
among the ignorant and unlearned as among 
the most educated, in the most barbaric as in 
the most civilized communities. This tend- 
ency to worship is born with us, and is as 
much an inheritance as are any of the in- 
stincts of the lower animals. We cannot get 
away from it. It is often revealed most of all 
in the men who say they worship nothing. 
All unconsciously they put in the place of an 
unseen deity some theory or some desire, or 
they make of science or self a fetish, an 
object of worship. Their illogical conduct is 
evident in every page they have written and 
in the whole tendency of their lives. Man 
cannot live without worship, and he must pro- 
vide something to worship. His instincts will 
not be crushed. In every condition in which 
he is placed this natural instinct compels 
recognition. 

This tendency of the race leads to worship- 
ing something that is visible. We desire to 
see what we worship. The number of gods is 
countless. It is said the Hindoos have three 



IDOLATRY 



169 



hundred million — a god for everything con- 
ceivable. Men have in all times and ages 
tried to give expression to their conception of 
the object of worship in some visible form. 
Therefore was the second commandment 
enacted — that God could not be represented 
by any shape or figure. The tendency and 
the instinct have been too strong for the law. 
Men everywhere have made for themselves 
objects of worship. It may have been a star, 
or it may have been a stone. It may have 
been a bone, or it may have been a book. 
Men have made for themselves something 
they could see, to which they might render 
adoration and devotion. 

Again, this tendency is manifest in yet 
another way. We put the secondary cause in 
the place of the primary cause; we give the 
influence we can see the place of the greater 
influence behind it that cannot be seen. This 
was the tendency of the Jews, and it is ours 
to-day. We find some secondary cause, some 
subordinate law, and we give it all the honor 
and glory for the condition it seems to have 
created. In this matter of religion, the old 
law of the square of the distance seems to 



170 



IDOLATRY 



hold good. The object nearest us is to us the 
most important, no matter how trivial it may 
be. Take a very small object and put it close 
to our eye, and it can shut out the sun. It 
will make our body full of darkness. The 
object may be a beautiful jewel. We mar its 
very loveliness by the place we give it. To 
see it at its best we must not place it so close 
to the eye as to exclude everything else from 
our vision. Its beauty can be most admired 
when it is bathed in the sunlight, far enough 
away for us to appreciate the glisten of its bril- 
liance. Its beauty is not self-born, but is be- 
gotten by the brightness of the king of the 
skies. Even so we take the secondary cause 
and put it first so that it shuts out the vision 
of the first cause. We make of the secondary 
cause — whether it be ugly or beautiful, 
whether it be helpful or hurtful — our idol. 
The tendency exists. We all have it. We 
are not yet quit of it. We all must worship. 
We cannot get away from that born instinct. 
We all want to worship something we can 
see. We all tend to put the secondary cause 
before the first cause and hide the great first 
cause from our view. The elements that go 



IDOLATRY 



171 



to make idolaters do not belong to any age of 
the race. They are as active in our hearts 
to-day as they were in the Baal worshipers, or 
in those who reverenced Moloch and Astarte, 
or in those who took part in the various crude 
and cruel ordinances that belonged to the 
manifold deities of barbaric lands and times. 

This tendency exists — exists as strongly in us 
with our education and our civilization as ever 
it did in the heart of a Jew or of a Christian 
Ephesian. But there is not merely a tendency. 
It is accompanied with a temptation, and it is 
when the tendency and the temptation come 
together that we are likely to yield. If there 
was no tendency in us in a given direction, 
the temptation would have no effect. There 
are certain men born peculiar. The ordinary 
tendencies that exist in the majority of the 
race may be wanting to them. The average 
temptation which touches you and touches 
me, and before which we sometimes fall, has 
no effect upon them at all. Sometimes we 
laud their attitude, whereas it deserves no lau- 
dation at all. They have no tendency within 
them to betray the citadel to the temptation 
without them. It is not a question of yield- 



172 



IDOLATRY 



ing; it is a question of the amount of resist- 
ance put forth. In judging we frequently fail 
to measure that. The difficulty with idolatry 
all through the ages has been that there was 
not only this tendency, but the temptation 
was there also. This temptation was every- 
where in Ephesus — everywhere, because in 
Ephesus you could not take a meal without 
recognizing an idol. The flesh had been sacri- 
ficed to idols first before it was sold in the 
market-place. You could not sell a piece of 
property without recognizing an idol. Every 
custom in Ephesus, in the home and in the 
market, was under the control and direction 
of some particular deity. Every man in his 
house or in his commercial dealings rendered 
reverence by some attitude, expression, or 
sacrifice to the special idol that presided over 
the particular incident, house, or custom. 
The temptation was everywhere in Ephesus. 
These Christians could not get away from it. 
The tendency was in their hearts; the tempta- 
tion was all around them. 

Has the temptation lessened? The tend- 
ency has not. We are as anxious to worship 
something as ever any generation before us. 



IDOLATRY 



173 



We are as anxious to worship what we can see. 
We are as anxious to worship a second cause 
that is close to us, rather than a first cause 
that is far away. If the tendency is so strong 
in us, what of the temptation? There are no 
idols now at every street corner, as in 
Ephesus. There are no temples now with 
uncouth statues like that of Diana command- 
ing supreme respect. Shall we say, there- 
fore, the temptation has lost its force, and 
these last words of the apostle, though very 
important to the Ephesian Christians, have 
for us but very slight significance, if any at 
all? Let us look at the temptation. If it is 
not as real to-day as it was long ago, one half 
of the Bible might never have been pre- 
served. More than half of that great litera- 
ture has to do with idolatry. If there is for 
us no temptation toward this sin, then for all 
practical purposes more than half of the 
Scriptures might be blotted out. Look at life 
in our own day and time. The temptation that 
appeals to this tendency in our nature mani- 
fests itself as universal as ever it was. This 
temptation to worship something that can be 
seen, some second cause rather than the first, 



174 



IDOLATRY 



is everywhere. It is as manifold in its meth- 
ods of presentation as it was in the days of 
stocks and stones in the city of Ephesus. It 
is true it has assumed a different shape. The 
very different shape it has assumed makes it 
all the more subtle and all the more deadly. 
The apparent innocence with which the temp- 
tation comes to us emphasizes the necessity 
for our listening to these words of the apostle 
with greater reverence than ever and applying 
them with greater force. 

Some of the African tribes fill their houses 
with idols. They fill the home so full there is 
hardly room enough for themselves and their 
families. They have to crowd together un- 
comfortably to even live in the most primitive 
style. You may say that is barbaric. We do 
not have anything like that in civilization. 
Do we not? How many things are in our 
houses that we do not want, ornaments we 
keep because custom requires it or commands 
their use? We would rather disobey the 
unseen God at any time than submit to the 
criticism of the idol we call custom. Our 
houses and our bodies are adorned in accord- 
ance with the regulations of fashion. We 



IDOLATRY 



175 



would sometimes fain break away from this 
idol. These useless things crowd uncomfort- 
ably, as uncomfortably as ever their crude 
images the inhabitants of an African hut. 
We are willing, however, to submit to this 
uncomfortable condition rather than expose 
ourselves to a sneer, or a laugh, a gibe, or a 
criticism. Is God, the unseen, or custom our 
deity? We are willing to do many things for 
custom's sake. We are willing to do very 
little for the unseen God's sake. Do we wor- 
ship God or custom? We may have no idol 
carved of wood, decorated with gold, clad 
with tapestry, bejeweled with gems, but this 
idol is as real as any idol to which Ephesian 
or Israelite bowed down. Idols are pressing 
upon us just as thick and close as in the hut 
of the African, where his rude fetishes fill up 
every corner and prevent him from enjoying 
life. The things that are the mastering 
things of the moment and take God's place in 
human hearts and human lives, the things 
that predominate, the things we think about, 
talk about, pray about, are our idols. They 
have taken the place God ought to have 
in our hearts and lives. They have made 



176 



IDOLATRY 



us with all our education and civilization 
and external refinement as real idolaters as 
ever were the worshipers at the shrine of 
Venus or of Diana. 

"Little children, guard yourselves from the 
idols." The tendency and the temptation 
are coming together every hour of our lives. 
In the old days they worshiped Mammon. 
He was a popular god. We do not have any 
gilded image to which we bow to-day, but the 
tendency of our lives is to think more about 
money, to talk more about money, to pray 
more about money than perhaps any genera- 
tion before us. It is not the men who have 
money who are the most guilty in this devo- 
tion. An idol does not depend upon its size. 
Some of the idols of old were gigantic. Huge 
temples had to be reared for them with 
vaulted roofs. Many of the idols were small, 
so small they could be carried in the pocket, 
so small they could be worn as charms. They 
were no less idols because they were little. 
It is far oftener the man who has no money 
who worships it than the man who has it. 
The worship of it consists in an overwhelming 
desire to possess it. Many who are burning 



IDOLATRY 



177 



with a desire to have it never get it. Their 

idolatry is not a whit less real than those who 

may have obtained it by a similar devotion. 

Again, the men who have it not are the men 

who envy those who have it. Why do they 

envy them? Because they think money can 

do what nothing else can do. Money to them 

is a god. It is not the having it that makes 

you worship it. It is your desire to have it 

rather than your desire to be true. We are 

worshipers of money, the majority of us, I fear. 

We would tell a lie for five dollars any day. 

We know God says we ought not. But God 

is of less value to many men than five dollars. 

The money is such a man's idol, as real as 

idol ever worshiped in Ephesus or Palestine. 

The temptation is here. Why do we thus 

think of money? Because money seems to 

us to be able to do so many things. We 

think it must be worth worshiping. There 

are, it is true, a great many things money can 

do. It is desirable to have it. It is not in the 

desire to have enough of it that the sin lies. 

It is in the worship of it as the main thing for 

which life was given us. 

The stone that an idolater worships is a 
12 



178 



IDOLATRY 



good enough stone. It would help to build 
his house stronger and better than the rude 
hut it at present is. It is not in the fact that 
it is a stone and that the stone might be of 
use to the worshiper, that the sin lies. It is 
in the fact that he takes the stone that would 
help him to build a good house, and instead 
of using it to build himself a good house in 
which he might be happy and comfortable, he 
makes it a god. The useful thing thus be- 
comes to him a means of hurt instead of a 
means of help. It is the same with money. 
Money in its place is like the stone in the 
wall. It serves a good end. It helps us to 
live life more comfortably. It enables us to 
bring joy into many sorrowing homes. But if, 
instead of making it the means to an end, we 
make it the end itself; instead of putting the 
stone in the wall, place it in a shrine and 
make it the god we serve, then what was 
meant to be a blessing to ourselves and to 
our friends becomes a curse. It has usurped 
God's place in our hearts and lives, and secures 
for us dissatisfaction with ourselves, with our 
friends, with our possessions, with our des- 
tiny. 



IDOLATRY 



179 



The temptation to worship something, to 
put something in the place of God, is as real 
and as near to-day as it was in the days of 
John in Ephesus. There are a great many 
other idols. We have not time to note them 
all. Paul speaks of money especially. He 
says covetousness is idolatry. Therefore, I 
have selected it as one illustration of the 
unseen idols pressing upon us, appealing to 
the natural tendency in our nature. The 
temptation to-day is all the more effective be- 
cause of the subtle way in which it presents 
itself to us. We would not for a moment 
worship the hideous things they worshiped in 
Ephesus. We would scoff at such an idea, 
scorn it, despise the men who did it. There 
is no use of the devil tempting us in that 
crude kindergarten style. He comes to us 
with a temptation much more subtle. He 
knows our nature is just the same as the 
nature of the people in Ephesus. Therefore, 
if he can only make his idol so like God that 
we are superficially deceived, he will succeed 
in leading us away from the worship of the 
only true unseen Sovereign, to the worship of 
these causes, these means, these lower and 



180 



IDOLATRY 



secondary things, rather than the worship of 
the sole cause of all, the source of life, and the 
consummation of happiness. 

Paul speaks of another deity — men whose 
god is their belly, who make an idol of appe- 
tite. You may say: "We do not." Do we 
not? There are very few people who do not. 
There is no question, I think, but that much 
of the sickness of to-day is caused by the 
luxuries of the table. We cultivate an appe- 
tite that becomes our master. You may say 
you are not exposed to the development of 
the appetite for drink. No, thank God, most 
people in churches are not. It is respect- 
able to eat too much, but it is not respect- 
able to drink too much. Yet eating too much 
is as great a sin as drinking too much. How 
many lives are cut short by eating too much, 
the doctors only can tell. One of the tenden- 
cies of our luxurious civilization is to tempt 
the appetite, to live for the titillation of a 
nerve, to sacrifice our ability to do good 
work to the satisfaction of our desire to eat 
good things. The tendency of all luxurious 
nations has been to revel in the table, to be 
willing to pay more and sacrifice more for 



IDOLATRY 



181 



what they can eat and drink than they are 
willing to pay or sacrifice for the unseen God. 
The idol of the table is a very popular idol. 
He seems very innocent and very attractive. 
He is always pressing upon our attention, 
claiming it, crowding God out of it. He is 
ever provoking us to think more about what 
we shall eat and what we shall drink than 
about the God who made us and who saved 
us. 

There are many other idols. There is the 
idol of pleasure. It is pressing continually 
upon our attention, and impels us to give up 
this and give up that. We may as well enjoy 
ourselves. Let us eat and drink, for to-mor- 
row we die. That may not be the confession 
of faith of the average church member, yet 
the average church member will give up a 
prayer-meeting any time for an opera engage- 
ment. They will give up any religious thing 
intended to develop their spiritual nature 
for something that will be a momentary 
satisfaction of the senses. The worship of 
pleasure to-day is as real as was the worship 
of Diana in Ephesus. This idol appeals to 
our temperament. He satisfies us immedi- 



182 



IDOLATRY 



ately. God will not satisfy us immediately. 
He tells us that such immediate satisfaction 
brings only surfeit. The delights of this idol 
that seem to us so satisfying now will in a few 
years pall upon us. We will be blase. 
There will be for us no new thing to titillate 
any nerve. We will be willing to give any 
price for some new method of worshiping this 
idol that will add anything to the joy of liv- 
ing. 

Art, literature, and science have all their 
place. But some men have made them gods. 
There is many a brilliant worker who will 
sacrifice for art all the moralities. There 
are strong writers who will sacrifice for 
literature all the teachings of the ten com- 
mandments. That they may make a striking 
situation in a novel, they will describe 
scenes it is a defilement of the mind to 
read. That they may produce a beautiful and 
striking picture, they will sacrifice everything 
that tends toward the elevation of the race. 
We have been told by some that our acute- 
ness as discoverers of distinctive colors has 
been lost. We have not been able, it seems, 
to preserve the tints and produce mosaics such 



IDOLATRY 



183 



as decorated Pompeii. Let us be thankful we 
have not. Pompeii, with all its ability in art, 
was one of the worst cities the world ever saw. 
So it has ever been. The man, the city, or 
the nation which have sacrificed morality for 
the idol of art have generally ruined them- 
selves, brought discredit upon their com- 
munity, and helped to disintegrate their civi- 
lization. 

I may not have named your idol. Anything 
that in your heart takes the place God should 
hold, is your idol. It may be your husband. 
It may be your wife. It may be your son. It 
may be your daughter. It may be some 
habit, innocent in itself. I do not know what 
it is. The old tendency to worship something 
we can see, something we can touch and 
handle, is exposed to a temptation every day 
and every hour of the day. Therefore, we 
need to listen to this behest of the apostle 
John: "My children, guard yourselves from 
the idols." The idols that come into your 
life and appeal to you are not the idols your 
neighbor worships. Each man and each 
woman has an idol appeals specially to 
them. In their heart and thought and life it 



184 



IDOLATRY 



has the place of places, the first rank, and 
thrusts God out of the position He should 
occupy in the center of their personality. 

How can we succeed in resisting a tempta- 
tion outside of us that appeals to a tendency 
so strong inside of us? Only in one way. We 
must realize that we are God's children. 
"My children," says the apostle John, "My 
little children." An old man of ninety, he 
looks upon all the grown-up Christians in 
Ephesus, so much younger than he was, 
knowing so much less than he did, and says: 
"My little children, guard yourselves from the 
idols." If we recognize our sonship, believe 
we are God's own, then we will be able to 
rise above the temptation of these seductive 
idols with which our life is crowded. We for- 
get our parentage. We forget we are sons 
and daughters of the Lord Most High. It is 
by looking to Him and to Him alone we can 
obtain a motive sufficient to resist these temp- 
tations. Men have sinned against all the logic 
of history, against all the warnings of con- 
science, against all the lessons of law, in mak- 
ing idols for themselves of something or 
another. No matter how we may reason, np 



IDOLATRY 



185 



matter how conscience may appeal, no matter 
what history records, neither reason, con- 
science, nor the history of law can supply a 
motive strong enough to enable men and 
women to crush these temptations, thrust 
their idols out, and give God first place in 
their hearts. This can be done only by the 
presence and the power of God himself. 
That presence and power can be realized only 
through Jesus Christ, who is the express 
image of the Father, the manifestation of the 
unseen God. When we love Jesus as a 
brother and love God as a father, feel the 
pulsations of divinity in our soul, and realize 
the royalty of our descent, then we can rise 
above temptations that appeal to the weak- 
ness of our nature; conquer every idol, how- 
ever beautiful it be, however subtly it 
attracts, however skilfully it is hidden; be- 
come worshipers of the one true Deity, using 
all things as our servants contributory toward 
our usefulness and toward the glory of the 
God who made us and gave us the powers we 
have to use. 



IDOLATRY 
Lo, here is God and there is God! 

Believe it not, oh, man, 
In such vain sort to this or that 

The ancient heathen ran. 
Though old religion shake her head 

And say in bitter grief, 
The day, behold, at first foretold 

Of atheist unbelief; 
Take better part, with manly heart 

Thine adult spirit can 
Receive it not, believe it not — 

Believe it not, oh, man!" 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 



"I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies, 
And if my heart and flesh are weak 

To bear an untried pain, 
The bruised reed He will not break, 

But strengthen and sustain." 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 



"A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smok- 
ing flax shall he not quench. He shall .bring forth 
judgment unto truth." 



To whom these words may have referred in 
their primal use, we cannot tell. It may have 
been the nation of Israel and their work for 
the world, or it may have been the prophet 
himself and his work for the nation. The con- 
ception of the writer is that of an ideal deliv- 
erer who shall come to the race or to the 
nation and accomplish for them all that is 
necessary to make them strong, pure, and 
true. The ideal, we believe, has been 
attained in Jesus Christ. 

The deliverer foretold is unlike the ordinary 
conception of deliverers. He approaches the 
objects of deliverance not as a conqueror, 
with sword and battle-ax. He comes to them 
with a tenderness that is a contrast to human 
conceptions of conquest and victory. The 
gentleness of God and the tenderness of Jesus 
189 



190 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

are aptly described in these poetic metaphors 
of the old prophet. He takes two pictures — 
one from the riverside, the other from the 
fireside. He says: " These two figures illus- 
trate the character and temperament of the 
ideal deliverer of humanity." 

The bruised reed and the smoking wick are 
insignificant things. Their very insignifi- 
cance is intensified by injury. Even a reed 
at its best is of no importance. It is not 
used for anything requiring great strength 
or great beauty. A wick at its best is of no 
great moment. The author refers to the ordi- 
nary wick of a cottage lamp. It was a cheap 
thing. The light it gave, even when it was 
trimmed with the utmost care, was a trifling 
light indeed. These two things, of but little 
importance, could be made of still less value, 
the rush or reed by being broken, the wick by 
becoming simply a smoldering spark. Thus 
their insignificance was intensified by their 
hurt. 

Not only so, but they became somewhat 
unpleasant. The reed broken by the riverside 
of Babylon, where bulrushes abounded, was 
not any addition to the beauty of the land- 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 191 



scape. Broken, it was out of harmony with 
the surroundings and spoiled the symmetry of 
the picture. The wick smoking, smoldering, 
gave out an odor unpleasant to the nostrils. 
These things so insignificant, being hurt, 
compel attention because of their condition. 
The eye and the nostril are forced to take 
cognizance of their obnoxious presence. 

If we interpret the reed as did Jerome, one 
of the old fathers, as being a reed of the pipes 
of Pan, we still get the same conception. 
Jerome thought the reed to which the prophet 
referred was the pipe of the earliest musical 
instrument. This instrument consisted of a 
series of reeds of different lengths into which 
the musician blew and so produced musical 
sounds. This was the earliest form of organ. 
It was from these bulrush stems, these reed 
pipes, all our great organs have been evolved. 
If one of the reeds in this primitive instru- 
ment became broken it produced discord. 
One reed seemed of little importance; its 
breaking, however, made it obnoxious even in 
its insignificance, because it marred the har- 
mony of the whole. 

Such is the picture of men as drawn by the 



192 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

prophet. We are broken, most of us. We 
are smoldering wicks. We have in us noth- 
ing of much importance, and the little we 
have makes us unpleasant companions. 
What is to be done with us? How shall we 
be treated if this world is to be reformed? 
Ought not all the broken reeds to be cut 
down at the root and burnt, so that every reed 
that grows on the river banks will be perfect 
in its symmetry? Ought not every smoking 
wick to be extinguished, so that its stench 
shall no longer offend the nostril, and only 
lamps that shine and give light in the home 
and to the community be preserved and 
protected? This is the argument humanity 
makes. Its processes of reformation are de- 
structive. It says: "Get rid of these things 
that are detrimental to the race; they are 
hindrances to its progress." Society has no 
time to heal the wounds it makes. Society 
has no desire to waste its energy in treating 
the broken reed, or in striving to preserve 
a smoking wick. The man who falls, it will 
trample upon in its mad rush after success. 
It has for him no sympathy whatever. It is 
too anxious about its own progress to waste 
its time over failures. 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 193 



If in the matter of material success society 
has no time to sympathize with its failures, 
even so in matters of moral progress. Men 
fall. They have sinned. They suffer. The 
law still holds: "Be sure your sin will find you 
out." Society has no place for fallen men or 
fallen women. What does society say to the 
man whose heart is crushed like a broken 
reed? What does society say to the man 
whose enthusiasm has all but died out and left 
only the stench of a smoldering wick where 
once there was the genial glow of a brilliant 
flame? Society says: "Served you right; you 
are reaping what you sowed; you are getting 
what you deserve." It piles upon the fallen 
soul its platitudes, its commonplaces, its con- 
ventional phrases of commiseration. It has 
no desire and no power to heal the reed 
that is broken or protect the wick that 
smolders. 

Leave the sphere of material progress and 
social morality, and enter the world of 
science. What has science to offer the 
broken reed and the smoldering flax? What 
has science to say in its latest creed to the 
man who is down, who has failed in his life 

13 



194 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

struggle, either physically, morally, or finan- 
cially? Science preaches the creed of the sur- 
vival of the fittest. "You weren't fit; 
therefore, when the whirlwind struck you, 
you became a broken reed. The reeds that 
were fit still shake their heads in the breeze. 
You weren't fit; therefore, the wind has 
blown out your blaze, and only a spark smol- 
ders where the light once shone. You 
weren't fit as the other lamps were to stand 
the blast. They kept their flame burning and 
their light shining through all the whirling 
whirlwind." What satisfaction is there for 
the man who is down in the creed of science? 
Is it any relief to me in my condition of 
brokenness to be told that I was not fit, and 
that my neighbor was? It begets in me 
antagonism to all things. It seems to me that 
he has been made fit through no power on his 
part. I have been left unfit through no 
neglect on mine. Therefore, the law that 
reigns, before which science bows, is an 
unjust and an unrighteous law. 

We need something more than society or 
science can supply. The average man is a 
failure. There is no one attains what they 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 195 

hoped to attain when they were young. 
Whatever prizes they win in life's struggle 
do not bring them exactly the satisfaction and 
the happiness they expected. Every man has 
failed more or less. Every man has in him- 
self the experience of being crushed, of being 
broken. Therefore, if we are to have a 
saviour, a deliverer, he must be one who shall 
not come with the force of a human con- 
queror and break the lamp and cut the reed, 
but one who shall treat us all with somewhat 
more consideration. The thought sometimes 
arises that God is cruel in His disappointment 
of men, in His allowing reeds to be broken 
and lamps to be put out. We imagine He is 
wanting in sympathy and void of tenderness. 
Is not that to make God less than ourselves? 
If we worship a God who is less than our- 
selves, we must gradually grow less also, for 
as is the God who is worshiped, so becometh 
the worshiper. If we hear a child cry, a tiny 
mite in the snow, it is natural for us, is it not, 
to follow the infant's wail, pick it up, and save 
it from starvation? If our God has not more 
pity than we manifest for an infant's cry, He 
is not worth worshiping. If, however, our 



196 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

pity is but a limited revelation of the limitless 
pity of the great Saviour, then we can 
imagine how He goes after us, broken and 
well-nigh extinguished, with a carefulness, a 
gentleness, and a tenderness that is more than 
human. 

It is this characteristic of the ideal deliverer 
the prophet would emphasize by these meta- 
phors. The world at large may in these years 
be tending toward utility. Society is saying: 
"This man is no use. This woman is no 
good. We have no time to waste in striving 
to rectify their blunders. We have no time 
to spend in trying to raise their hopes." 
Jesus comes into this life of ours where we 
are likely to sacrifice pity to usefulness. He 
says: "There are greater things than useful- 
ness; utility is not the end of a reed's crea- 
tion; utility is not the supreme good in life." 
Jesus touches the useless, the man or 
woman who in their uselessness have become 
a stumbling-block, an offense to sight, hear- 
ing, and smell, touches them in His infinite 
pity. Jesus says to them: "I will not break 
you more; I will not put out your last 
spark. " It is gentleness He uses instead of 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 197 

force. There is in His touch of tenderness 
the greatest power of all. You cannot force 
a broken reed to be a full-grown bulrush again 
and hold its stately, graceful head in the 
wind. You cannot take a smoldering wick 
and force it back to light and warmth again. 
No forcing of the wick, no forcing of the rush 
will restore them to their original condition. 
Tender carefulness alone will bring back the 
rush to strength and vigor, and the spark to a 
blaze. Do we not often misunderstand and 
misrepresent God's methods of treatment? 
He says: "My way to touch men is by tender- 
ness, by gentleness. I would not force them. 
I would draw them. I would develop them 
into what they ought to be, into what they 
might be." We try to force our opinions 
upon men. Thank God, in this age there are 
but few countries where religious opinions are 
forced upon men, as they once were, at the 
point of the sword or with the threat of the 
stake. But still there is the attempt to 
coerce men by public opinion to accept cer- 
tain popular views of God and His Christ. 
Every effort to coerce means failure in the 
long run. Napoleon recognized that. He 



198 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

said in St. Helena: "My empire has disap- 
peared because it was founded upon force, 
but the empire of Jesus Christ shall continue 
because it is founded upon love." No nation 
founded upon force has ever lasted long in 
this world's story. The nation sustained by 
the patriotism of free citizens has become the 
nation of greatest strength and vitality. It 
has only been when free citizens, because of 
their interest in individual success, sacrificed 
their rights to a despot, that a nation has 
eventually started upon the decline that ended 
in destruction. 

We understand the weakness of force in 
other directions. I dislike apples. You 
force me to eat an apple. My eating it does 
not make me like it. My sensations are not 
changed. I may swallow it, but I swallow it 
as a bitter thing. I resent your attitude in 
forcing me to take a thing against which my 
sensations protest. If you cannot force my 
sensations to like the thing you like the taste 
of, much less can you force my affections to 
love the thing you love. If in the matter of 
emotion and of sensation force is useless, it is 
still more so when you reach the sphere 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 199 

higher than either sensation or emotion, the 
sphere of spirit. If you cannot make me 
like the taste of the thing you like, and 
if you cannot make me love the thing 
you love, you cannot make me trust 
in the sphere of spirit the personality you 
trust. You cannot make me believe by any 
force of argument, by any force of punish- 
ment, in the God in whom you say you 
believe. The failure to appreciate the ten- 
derness of God in Christ as the great force 
that makes for the restoration of broken lives 
has made the church sometimes a curse to its 
day and generation instead of a blessing. 
Jesus will not crush the broken reed. Jesus 
will not put out the smoking wick. Instead 
of exercising a power that would mean only 
destruction, He exercises another power, the 
power of pity, the power of sympathy, the 
power of gentleness, the power of love, and 
therewith takes the ruined and the broken and 
restores them to strength and vigor again. 

This thought is a thought of victory. In 
this way only has the church advanced. In 
this way only will the world be conquered. 
"I shall bring forth judgment unto truth," 



200 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

means that the ideal saviour shall correct the 
mistakes of men. The Gentile nations were 
groping after good. In their search they 
were but broken reeds and smoldering wicks. 
The ideal deliverer shall give them the truth, 
and the truth shall reign. If you tell a man 
the truth as a judge with severity, or even as 
a philosopher with dogmatism, he will not 
necessarily accept the truth you thus state to 
him, be it ever so true. He may not be able 
to resist your authority. He may not be able 
to confute your arguments. But he will re- 
fuse to accept the truth in his heart of hearts. 
There is nothing so irritating as the truth told 
by a blunt and candid friend, whose sincerity 
has in it nothing of sympathy. The thing 
that shall make the ideal saviour successful 
shall be that he shall tell the truth to men and 
women who are broken by error, in such a 
gentle, kindly spirit that they shall not resent 
it, but accept it and be restored by it to 
strength and beauty. Such is a true picture 
of Jesus Christ. He alone of all the teachers 
of the ages can teach the truth that is the 
most severe in a style so simple, in a manner 
so pitiful, with a tone so tender, that men, 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 201 

instead of resenting the authority of Him 
"who spake as never men spake," are capti- 
vated by the gentleness of His treatment, and 
realize He teaches the truth they need. 

A broken reed and a smoldering wick. It is 
a reed still. It is a lamp yet. It is a wick 
always. All they need is some power outside 
themselves to stimulate their activities to 
become what they once were, and perhaps 
more than they have ever yet been. So it is 
with the race. We are not all so bad that 
there is nothing in us good. It has been said 
there are some savages who have no con- 
science, no realization of the difference be- 
tween right and wrong. I very much ques- 
tion that conclusion. They may have a 
standard of right and wrong that is not moral 
in the sense in which our standard is moral. 
Toward the standard of their savage condition 
they may exercise a conscience just as effec- 
tively as we exercise a conscience toward the 
higher standard of moral life we have 
accepted. Although it may be questioned 
whether the lowest man has any conscience, it 
cannot be questioned that the lowest man has 
some self-sacrifice. Can you imagine a sav- 



202 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

age who never sacrificed his time or his 
ability, of whatever kind it may be, for some- 
body he liked? Can you imagine the worst 
man, savage or civilized, never exercising self- 
sacrifice in his life? It is unimaginable. You 
cannot think of a man of that kind. I do not 
believe there is a man of that kind alive in 
the world, even among the most savage races. 
The fact that a man is able to sacrifice his 
time or his strength or his ability or his pos- 
sessions for anything or any one he likes or 
loves, shows he is capable of appreciating in 
some slight degree the self-sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ. This self-sacrificing spirit, which 
manifested itself in man at his lowest for a 
brief space and for some particular object or 
person, manifested itself in Jesus from His 
birth in Bethlehem to His Cross on Calvary. 
The Master says: "I am willing to help the 
worst." Where the spirit of self-sacrifice, 
like the spark in a dying wick, smolders, and 
the life about it is vile and the perfume dis- 
gusting, I can breathe by my grace upon the 
tiniest spark until the blaze that ought to be 
a man's shall be there, and his whole life shall 
be radiant with the light that is in mine own. 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 203 

Jesus comes as conqueror to the race. He 
says: ' 'You may be bad; I know it. You may 
have committed every sin; I know it. But in 
you yet there is a spark of the divine. The 
spark is enough for me to work on. I do not 
come as a human conqueror to chastise you 
for your sin, to break you with the rod of my 
authority. I come to watch the spark that 
smolders in the black crust of the wick, to 
breathe upon it with gentleness, to protect it 
with my pierced hands until it begins to glow 
and the flame gradually increases, and you 
who were once a disgusting sinner become a 
bright and shining light in the world of God." 
Such is the poetic picture of the prophet. 
Has the Christ touched you with the breath of 
His spirit? Has He blown upon the spark in 
your nature until you are alive with light? 
Has He transformed you from a dark, smol- 
dering, stench-giving lamp into a bright and 
shining light that makes the household hap- 
pier and the world gladder for your living 
there? However bad you may be to-day, 
shrink not from the Saviour. You can 
imagine a broken reed, as it sees a man come 
down by the riverside, draw itself in and say: 



204 THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 

"He will trample me again, and I shall be 
broken worse." So men do. They heed not 
the broken. This man Jesus Christ, where 
others trample in nonchalant contempt, stops 
and takes the shrinking thing, lifts it in His 
gentle fingers, touches with a tenderness that 
is His own its wounded stem, holds it until it 
stands once more in the sunshine and the 
breeze, made strong by the hand of the great- 
est Conqueror. I would not have you shrink 
from God in Christ. It is natural for men 
who have done wrong, done wrong often, 
done wrong loudly, done wrong publicly, to 
be afraid of God and Christ. They know 
they deserve to be broken. They know their 
light ought to be put out. They cannot for- 
give others who have wronged them. They 
cannot even forgive themselves. They shrink 
back from the presence of the Christ. Do 
not be afraid. He can save unto the utter- 
most. Even the reed that is not only broken 
in one place, but in many places, where the 
wild beast of the river, the behemoth, hath 
trampled upon it and crushed it almost into 
pulp, He can lift from the mud in which it 
lieth, touch with a tenderness that is inspir- 



THE GENTLE CONQUEROR 205 

ing, and make it once more nod its plumed 
head over the glinting river and wave itself in 
the balmy breeze. The Jesus, the Christ, the 
ideal Saviour is here to-day. However slight 
your spark, however much broken, He would 
touch the one and breathe upon the other 
until reed and lamp shall fill their place 
again, and in the shaking plume and in the 
shining flame give joy to the landscape and 
gladness to the home. 

"There is no place where earth's sorrows 

Are more felt than up in heaven; 
There is no place where earth's failings 

Have such kindly judgment given; 
There is plentiful redemption 

In the blood that has been shed; 
There is joy for all the members 

In the sorrows of the Head." 



THE GOOD YEAR 



"Blow ye the trumpet, blow; 

The gladly solemn sound 
Let all the nations know, 

To earth's remotest bound, 
The year of jubilee is come; 
Return, ye ransomed spirits, home." 



THE GOOD YEAR 



"The spirit of the Lord God is upon me to pro- 
claim the acceptable year of the Lord." 



The word "proclamation" with us has 
somewhat of a governmental meaning-. It is 
associated with the head of the state, or with 
some state decree intended for the guidance 
and instruction of the citizens. In the olden 
time the word had no such restricted mean- 
ing. It meant simply to tell something, 
something worth the hearing, something the 
listener was very anxious to know. The ex- 
pectation of the Jews at this particular period 
in their history was to hear something, some- 
thing they wanted very much to hear, some- 
thing necessary to the fostering of hope in 
their hearts, something likely to bring relief 
to their sad, exiled condition. The idea 
might perhaps be interpreted, as some have 
done, by the phrase, "a bit of news." That was 
what the Jews were waiting for — a bit of news. 

14 209 



210 



THE GOOD YEAR 



We do not always realize the significance of 
a bit of news in our ordinary every-day life. 
When there is some great occasion and the 
nation's perpetuity depends upon certain 
events, with what keenness the citizens are 
alert to listen to the slightest rumor that tells 
either of failure or success. Those of you 
who remember the Civil war will recollect 
many occasions when a bit of news either ex- 
cited hope or provoked despair. The bit of 
news that Vicksburg had fallen made a great 
change in the feelings of this whole nation. 
It was the same in the history of other na- 
tions. When Germany invaded France in 1870, 
the whole people were waiting for the news 
whether the army had been overwhelmed or 
was marching to victory. When the news 
reached Berlin that the German army had 
been victorious, that bit of news transformed 
the whole condition of the Fatherland from 
depressed expectation to exultant joy. More 
recently, what a transformation took place in 
this nation when the bit of news was sent 
across the wires of Dewey's victory at Manila. 
How the nation was startled into exultancy 
and simply swept off its feet in a very exuber- 
ance of joy! 



THE GOOD YEAR 



211 



The Jews were in that expectant condition. 
They were anxious to hear some news that in 
their depressed state would beget some of the 
enthusiasm they once had known; that in 
their almost hopeless slavery would recreate 
the hope the old prophets had preached, and 
the old fathers had felt. The prophet tells 
them a messenger shall come, bringing a bit 
of news that shall delight their hearts, inspire 
their enthusiasm, and stimulate their activ- 
ities. 

The word here used for the telling of this 
bit of news is the word we use now for 
preaching. It had no such meaning then. 
This is the first place where the word was 
used in the Greek translation of this prophet 
for any religious news at all. It previously 
meant in ordinary Greek a bit of news of any 
kind. The thought of the prophet is that the 
bit of news the coming messenger will have 
to tell will be the best bit of news a Jew could 
hear, the best bit of news the world could 
ever receive. 

What is this bit of news? The proclama- 
tion, the preaching, the telling, that the year 
of God's favor has come, the acceptable year 



212 



THE GOOD YEAR 



of the Lord. The reference is to the year of 
jubilee. The year of jubilee had certain 
characteristics that made it to the Jew the 
most blessed of all years. According to the 
Mosaic law, it dealt with four difficulties of 
society, and tried to redress them in the most 
simple and comprehensive fashion. It dealt, 
first, with the question of slavery. The man 
who was a slave in the year of God's favor 
must be set free. It dealt, secondly, with the 
question of debt. The man who through 
some misfortune had become indebted to. his 
fellow in the year of jubilee must be forgiven 
what he owed. It dealt with the question of 
poverty. In the year of jubilee the poor were 
provided with money and land, so that they 
could begin again to try to make a living. It 
thus touched the land question. The land 
could not be sold forever. No profligate 
could alienate from the family the soil that 
had belonged to his predecessors. In the 
year of jubilee all the mistakes of profligacy 
would be corrected; the land would return to 
its original owners. 

The jubilee year embodied a great ideal. 
It was never made practical. At no time in 



THE GOOD YEAR 



213 



the history of Israel were its demands com- 
plied with. It was the Jewish ideal of what a 
nation ought to be, embodied in their legisla- 
tion. If legislation is so far ahead of practice 
that it is only ideal, it is of no great value to 
national life. This ideal, perfect in some 
ways as it is, was so far beyond the practice 
of the Jewish people it brought little or no 
comfort at any time in their national history 
to those whom it was specially meant to 
bless. There is still this weakness among us. 
We would fain have ideal laws. There are in 
the community a class who desire to express 
their ideals in legislation. The consequence 
is that there is, perhaps, no country under 
the sun where there are such ideal laws as in 
the United States, and no country where the 
laws are so badly obeyed. In other words, 
we have permitted certain citizens to express 
the ideal in legislation before the spirit that is 
necessary to secure obedience to such an ideal 
has permeated the majority of the com- 
munity. Law is the registration of the prac- 
tical ideal of a people. Law should not pre- 
cede, but should follow, the developments of 
society. Wherever law has tried to lead 



214 



THE GOOD YEAR 



instead of follow by crystallizing the common 
sentiment of safety and progress in its enact- 
ments, law has been disgraced and disobeyed. 
It would have been better never to have ex- 
pressed the ideal in legislation than to have 
it expressed and then disregarded. Such was 
the position of the Jew. Many people have 
learned nothing from this Jewish folly. We 
cannot have our ideal practiced until the 
majority of the community is permeated with 
it, and then is the time to express our ideal in 
law, for there will be a majority in favor of 
its maintenance and enforcement. If a 
minority tries to express the ideal in law, the 
majority, not having come up to their stand- 
ard of sentiment and civic spirit, will either 
do nothing or will thwart the law, and so mat- 
ters become worse than if there were no law 
at all, because there is fostered a disregard for 
all law, even for law a majority of the com- 
munity may be in favor of enforcing. 

Such was the condition in Israel. This 
ideal year never was enforced, never could 
have been enforced. The Jewish people had 
not reached a condition of civilization when 
they would have stood for the enforcement of 



THE GOOD YEAR 



215 



this law in all its features. Some of its char- 
acteristics were obeyed from time to time by 
a small minority. An effort was made by a 
few devout and patriotic citizens to conform 
thereto. As a national ideal expressed in 
national action, it never was practical. 

What did it mean as an ideal, and why is it 
used here in connection with the highest of 
all ideals? It meant that the race ought to 
provide for those who have been more or less 
overwhelmed by the conditions of society. 
Look at the conditions of our civilization to- 
day. What the Jew could not do by his law 
and did not do, has been done by Christianity. 
The Jew could not abolish slavery. His ideal 
only concerned itself with Hebrew slaves, not 
with the abolition of the slavery of foreigners. 
But even the abolition of Hebrew slavery was 
never a complete success. What the ideal as 
expressed in legislation failed to accomplish, 
Christianity has accomplished. Wherever 
Christianity to-day is recognized, the year of 
God's favor has come to the slave and the 
fetters of his bondage have been broken. 

The Jew did not provide for his debtor. 
The Jew was not inclined to forgive his debts, 



216 



THE GOOD YEAR 



The ideal legislation demanded that on the 
fiftieth year they should be forgiven. What 
has Christianity done for the debtor? It is 
not so many years since debtors were impris- 
oned with all the rougher sort of criminals, 
and were exposed in prison to all kinds of 
suffering. To-day Christianity has so per- 
meated the prison and so solved this question 
of debt that one might almost say the law is 
too loose and considerate, and that men take 
advantage of its very liberality to cheat the 
community. What the law could not do, in 
that it was weak, through the flesh, Christian- 
ity has done for the slave and the debtor. 

The year of the Lord's favor was supposed 
to bring an amelioration of the condition of 
the poor, those who were absolutely at the 
mercy of the community, who by loss of 
health or from some other cause were unable 
to maintain themselves or provide for those 
dependent upon them. The Hebrew nation 
never succeeded in providing satisfactorily for 
its poor. The Hebrew nation, brought into 
touch with Christianity, has expressed, as it 
never did when it had its own national life, 
the ideal of the Mosaic law. The uncon- 



THE GOOD YEAR 



217 



scious influence on Hebrew activities of 
Christian environment is nowhere more evi- 
denced than in their consideration and pro- 
vision for their poor. When they had the 
chance as a nation with this law on poverty 
crystallized into their legislation, they did not 
enforce it. They left it to the liberality of a 
few of the more devout of their people to 
make what provision was necessary for those 
in absolute want. What the law could not do 
for the Jew in the year of God's favor, the 
Gospel has done for the poor. Christianity 
has permeated society. The poor, who for- 
merly were looked after only by the church, 
are provided for in all kinds of charitable insti- 
tutions at the expense of the state. The very 
conditions of the year of God's favor that 
were ideal to the Jew and never could be 
made practical, have been taken by Christian- 
ity and made her common, every-day methods. 
By her influence even the Jew himself has 
been touched so that he is living nearer to the 
ideal here and now than he did when his 
nation was at home in its own land. 

The year of God's favor. The year of 
jubilee. "The acceptable year of the Lord," 



218 



THE GOOD YEAR 



as our translators have called it, is an 
emblem, not of a particular year. It is an 
illustration of a dispensation. The gospel 
time would be the time of God's favoj, the 
acceptable year, the time when the best bit of 
news humanity has ever heard would be car- 
ried from nation to nation the whole world 
round. Jesus Christ came to earth. He said 
He had come to proclaim the acceptable year 
of the Lord, applying to Himself and to His 
ministry these very words of the prophet. 
He came to set the slave free from sin. He 
came to make the poor rich with grace. He 
came to pay the debt men owed to the law. 
He came to tell men of a land of light and 
liberty, of bliss immortal and joy unending. 

Did the deliverance of this message cease 
when He left us? Is He not still the head of 
His body, the church? Did He not leave it a 
responsibility upon every soul who knew to 
tell or cause to be told this bit of news to 
every other soul on earth? The man who has 
heard and experienced the love of God in 
Christ Jesus, who knows what it means to 
believe in a God who is love, in a God who 
forgives sin, in a God who gives life eternal, 



THE GOOD YEAR 



219 



and refuses to tell that bit of news to another 
man, deserves to be damned, and will be, for 
God is just. If you know and believe that 
God is love, if you know and believe that sin 
can be forgiven, if you know and believe that 
it is possible to be happy here and happy 
hereafter, and say, ' 'I will tell nobody else," 
4 'The bit of news is good enough for me," "I 
will keep it to myself," is not your attitude 
that of a fiend rather than a man? Would any 
man or woman who saw other men and 
women die in agony because they thought 
God was justice and not love, saw that they 
feared with an agonizing dread His presence 
and went shrieking into the void, refuse to 
tell the dying souls in their struggling agonies 
the bit of news that made their own heart 
glad, that God was no such fearsome phan- 
tom as they imagined, but was love itself? 
How could the man or the woman who dare 
do such a thing ever hope to be with the God 
who sent them that news at the cost of His 
Son's cross? How can they ever expect to be 
considered human in their pity and fit for a 
human heaven, let alone a divine home? The 
pity that is begotten by heathendom is a pity 



V 



220 



THE GOOD YEAR 



that should provoke our enthusiasm to tell 
them as plainly and as pointedly as we can 
the bit of news Christ told us from the cross, 
that God is love, that God forgiveth sin, that 
He would fain make all men happy here and 
now, and give them pledge in present experi- 
ence of future joy unending. Lately we have 
had our own calamity. The sympathies of the 
Christian world have been expressed for 
Chicago, owing to our theater fire. This hor- 
ror has touched the hearts of the Christian 
race everywhere. In all ways possible they 
have tried to show their sympathy with the 
sufferers in this great city. In the lands of 
heathendom each day that dawns, under the 
vices their religion has fostered, cruelties are 
exercised on women and children to which the 
holocaust of the Iroquois was a merciful end. 
Yet we sit idly by and say: "These people are 
not of our nationality. These people have 
not our ideals. Let their women suffer. Let 
their children die. They are not our women. 
They are not our children." Is not such the 
spirit of Cain? The men and women who 
can sit idly by and say they have a bit of 
news that would make this torture less, that 



THE GOOD YEAR 



221 



would save these children from death, and 
worse than death, and who refuse to tell 
the news or send others to tell it, are worthy 
of condemnation by all men in whose hearts 
there is human pity, and how much more by 
God whose pity is not limited like our own, 
and who loves these lost children as He loves 
us? Shall He not hold us accountable if, 
with the news in our heart, with the words 
on our lips, we refuse to proclaim the year 
of His favor, refuse to make known to these 
agonizing souls the love of His nature, the 
beauty of His Son, and the hope of His 
heaven? 

"Wake the song of jubilee, 
Let it echo o'er the sea; 
Now is come the promised hour, 
Jesus reigns with glorious power." 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



1 'What means this glory round our feet,' 
The Magi mused, 'more bright than morn 
And voices chanted clear and sweet, 
'To-day the Prince of Peace is born.' 

; 'What means this stir,' the shepherds said, 
'That brightness through the rocky glen?' 
And angels answering overhead, 
Sang, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!' 

1 'Tis eighteen hundred years, and more, 
Since those sweet oracles were dumb; 
We wait for Him, like them of yore; 
Alas! He seems so slow to come. 

' But it is said, in words of gold, 

No time or sorrow e'er shall dim, 
That little children might be bold 
In perfect trust to come to Him. 

; All around about our feet shall shine 
A light like that the wise men saw, 
If we our loving wills incline 
To that sweet Life which is the Law. 

So shall we learn to understand 
The simple faith of shepherds then; 

And kindly clasping hand in hand, 
Sing, peace on earth, good-will to men!" 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



"I bring you good tidings of great joy." 



The Christmas season is associated with 
joy, and the source of its joy is Christ him- 
self. We have entered into the heritage of 
Christian civilization, and have been born 
amid so many of its blessings we fail to 
appreciate what the coming of Christ meant 
to the world. The Christmas message is the 
greatest message humanity has ever received. 
The Christmas gift of Jesus Christ has 
enabled man to attain most of the joys he 
now knows. 

If we consider the question of religion, we 
will realize how the angelic message is good 
tidings of great joy. The religion of the 
world until the coming of Christ had been a 
religion of blood shedding, of pain, and sacri- 
fice. The Jew had been restricted to animals, 
but other nations demanded men. Religion 
meant to most races the sacrifice of the first- 

15 225 



226 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



born, of the best beloved, to appease the 
anger of their gods. We cannot imagine 
what joy it brought to a heart that felt the 
boy they loved must be given to the god they 
worshiped, to be told that God had given His 
own Son, and that no man's son from thence- 
forth would require to be slain to appease His 
anger or evoke His favor. No mother to-day 
can measure the joy such a message brought 
to mothers who knew what it was to see their 
baby boys borne to the temple of Moloch and 
burned in his brazen arms. No father to-day 
can understand what such words meant to 
fathers who dreaded that their sons in their 
youth and prime might be taken and sacrificed 
by cruel priests to appease some god who had 
sent too much sunshine or kept back the 
rain. 

Jesus brought even more joyful news. Men 
had been afraid of their god. Whether they 
called him Jehovah or Jove, they feared him. 
They did not find pleasure in the realization 
of his presence or the consciousness of his 
nearness. To the Jew, God was infinite 
justice, who punished every sin with inflexible 
righteousness. Almost every man and woman 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



227 



felt they had sinned, and that they deserved 
punishment. God to them was, therefore, 
a Nemesis, a messenger of vengeance fol- 
lowing their path. The Christmas child 
brought to the world the story that, though 
God was just, His mercy was as great as His 
justice, and that, although God hated sin, He 
loved sinners. This distinction the world 
could never make until the Christ came. We 
cannot tell what joy it brought to human 
hearts, striving to be good and true, the reve- 
lation that God, though inflexibly just, was 
infinitely loving; that God, though a judge of 
men and of their ways, was their Father, who 
delighted to develop their powers, and found 
joy in all that brought, true joy to them. 

Religion before the time of Christ was a 
matter of monotonous melancholy. Even the 
music of the sacred songs of the ancients 
were like funeral dirges. There was in them 
no note of gladness. The Greeks strove to 
make worship a joyous thing. They encour- 
aged their worshipers to indulge in revelry 
that, after its ecstatic, feverish effort, ex- 
hausted all genuine joy and killed all true 
pleasure. The coming of the Christ of 



228 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



Christmas brought into religion a note of 
cheerfulness. The music that has moved the 
world by its melodious cadences and its thrill- 
ing joyousness is music that has been born at 
Bethlehem, or touched by the influences of 
the manger cradle as it has reached adown the 
ages. Religion in all its aspects was changed 
by the Christ from a solemn, melancholy, de- 
spairing thing into a gladsome, joyous, happy 
exercise. 

We have inherited the Christian religion. 
Therefore, we fail to recognize the greatness 
of the joy it develops. We are descended 
from savages who slew each other that they 
might thereby appease their god. But we are 
so far removed from our barbarous ancestors 
we fail to recognize the sublime signifi- 
cance of the birth of Christ, the unique glad- 
ness that the revelation made at Bethlehem 
begot in hearts burdened with sorrow, baffled 
by sin, and over-powered by the despair fos- 
tered by their religion. 

If our religion is not a joyous thing, then it 
is not the religion of Jesus Christ. One of 
the first characteristics of a Christian is joy, 
and if we have no joy we are not Christians. 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



229 



It does not matter what we say we believe. 
It does not matter what we say we do, if we 
have no joy in our belief and our activities. 
Joy is the beginning and the end of the mes- 
sage of the Christ, and the life that is joyless 
has not been touched by Him. The life that 
is joyless is a life the tendencies of which are 
downward. The life that is glad with the 
gladness of the angels, with the gladness of 
true religion, with the gladness of God, brings 
with it wherever it goes an atmosphere of joy 
that tells for true optimism and makes life 
more livable for all it touches in its manifold 
ministries of mercy and love. 

When Jesus Christ came half the world 
were slaves. One man in Rome owned 
twenty-five thousand. Work was character- 
istic of slavery. One half the race worked 
without wage and the other half loafed. 
Jesus brought to humanity a message of great 
joy — that God meant all men to be free. It 
took long years to realize this truth. But 
slavery to-day has been broken in every land, 
and the joy of freedom is the joy of Christ. 

All work was despicable. There were but 
three tasks a free man could discharge in 



230 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



Rome with respectability. One was architec- 
ture, another commerce, and the last medi- 
cine. These were the only three callings 
open to free men. Jesus infused into a world 
that looked upon work as a curse the revela- 
tion that work was a pleasure. In making 
that revelation, He transformed the cause of 
the greatest sorrow into the motive of the 
greatest joy. The ideal condition is when the 
man loves his work and does it, not for a liv- 
ing, but for the love of it. It is true that such 
a condition has not yet become universal. But 
while it has not become universal, it is the 
ideal, an ideal unknown, undreamt of, in the 
days of the first Christmas. Then the best 
men dreamed of a workless world, where all 
was idleness, and every task discharged by 
slaves. Now the best men dream of a work- 
ing world, where all shall labor, but where 
every man shall love his task and exercise his 
abilities to the utmost, and in that exercise 
find life's greatest gladness and life's truest 
satisfaction. The difference between the two 
ideals of the best men of the respective ages 
has been created by the message of the angel 
and the coming of the Lord. All true work 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



231 



has in it something of joy, and the workers 
that have made the world have been the 
workers who did not work for wages, but who 
worked because they loved their labor. All 
the great monuments of genius men travel 
far to admire were wrought by workmen 
who found joy in their work. The great 
architects, the great artists, the great sculp- 
tors, the great politicians who have influenced 
their nation and the race, spent themselves 
without reserve in the work they loved. We 
treasure their names, esteem their memory, 
and admire their efforts to-day. This joy in 
work is one of the greatest influences for good 
in life, and finds its inspiration in the Carpen- 
ter of Nazareth. 

Good tidings of great joy were a contrast to 
the despair that existed in the minds of the 
master men at the time when Christ was 
born. The leaders of human thought 
believed the world was coming to an end. 
No man could trust another in Rome. Every 
man doubted his neighbor. The bonds that 
make for social consolidation and national 
maintenance were loosened. Every thought- 
ful heathen saw the coming of the world's 



232 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



end. There seemed no hope for the nation, 
no hope for the race, no hope for the individ- 
ual. Life was a weariness and a worry, spent 
either in the indolent luxury that brought dis- 
satisfaction to the free-born, or in the irritat- 
ing and wearisome labor that brought no 
return to the common slave. What was the 
use of living? Despair was written on the 
sk}'. There was no future to live for. The 
angel came with his message. It was an 
unexpected message. All unexpected mes- 
sages beget joy. The world was not yet at an 
end. The future was not draped with de- 
spair, but blazoned with hope. A man could 
be and might be and should be good and true. 
It was a message, the highest and the holiest, 
the most deep and the most universal that 
had ever touched the life of the race. 

We to-day have all these reasons for joy. 
Our religion, in contrast with every other 
form of religion that has existed or that still 
exists in the world, is a religion of joy, 
because it reveals to us a God who is a 
Father, who loves us, and who does not de- 
light to torture, but to develop His sons and 
daughters. A God whose worship is not 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



233 



whining prayers and monotonous dirges, but 
whose worship should be the prayer that has 
in it the living thrill of conversation between 
true friends, and songs that strike amid their 
melody with constant recurrence the greatest 
of all notes in Christian music, the note of 
joy. A religion that teaches us that work is 
honorable, honorable in all; that the idle are 
the fiendish, the idle are the tempted; the 
idle, whether well born or low born, are a 
curse to themselves and a curse to the race; 
that the ideal is for every man to have a task 
to do for God and humanity, a task he loves, 
into which he puts his heart's best desire and 
his brain's best thought, and in his effort finds 
the highest satisfaction of created souls — the 
consciousness of fulfilling the purpose for 
which he was made. 

Our religion is the only religion that is 
filled with hope. It has taken us more than 
a thousand years to grow up from barbarous 
cannibals to our present condition of civilized 
society. We grew very slowly through the 
generations, and we are growing still. The 
process was so slow that in every age there 
were men and women who held up their 



234 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



hands in despair and said: "The world is 
growing worse." Their little world had 
broadened out, and they began to contrast the 
limited characteristics of their tiny home with 
the great complicated, interwoven, social con- 
ditions of a big city. We are open to the 
same tendency. We have lived in a city that 
was small and had not the vices that a city 
of two million possesses. Instead of compar- 
ing Chicago with London a hundred years 
ago, we compare Chicago with itself when it 
was a city of a hundred thousand or of five 
hundred thousand people, and because the 
conditions have changed, and we have not, we 
see the evil increase and become blind to the 
development of the good about us and around 
us. Or we lived in a little country village or 
on a farm where the vices of the city were 
unknown, and we begin to compare the 
vicious surroundings of a city of two million 
with the conditions of a village of a thousand 
or two thousand, or with the domestic felicity 
and quietude of farm life, and we say: ' 'How 
things are going to the devil; how the world 
is drifting to the bad." We ought to com- 
pare Rome with Chicago, and Chicago is 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



235 



ideal compared to the hell Rome was when 
a city of equal size. Nay, more, Chicago 
is ideal compared with what Paris was 
a hundred years ago, compared with what 
London was a hundred years ago, compared 
with what any city of near its population was 
a hundred years ago. It is our inability to 
make fair comparisons that begets our doubt 
of the progress of the race, our hopelessness 
in the face of strange conditions and new out- 
bursts of viciousness. We need to remember 
that our fathers thought just the same thing. 
If it has taken over a thousand years to make 
us as semi-barbaric as we are in our selfishness 
and veneered viciousness, how much longer 
will it take to make us what God meant us to 
be, or to make the race that shall descend from 
us what God meant it to be, when every man 
shall realize that love itself is God's greatest 
gift, that opportunities are the greatest source 
of satisfaction, that religion is the fountain of 
all joy, and that work added to religion gives 
the sublimest pleasure? There is no joy can 
come to any man on earth or in Heaven so 
great as the consciousness that there is some- 
thing God has given him the capacity and the 



236 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



chance to do, and that he can do it as it ought 
to be done, do it the best it can be done, do it 
so that in the task and its accomplishment he 
finds the greatest pride and the greatest pleas- 
ure. 

The joy of Christmas was not meant to be 
some spasmodic outburst of a few hours. 
The joy of Christmas was meant to be the 
controlling factor in the Christian's life from 
his conversion unto eternity. Our religion in 
its reality and its sincerity can be measured 
by the length and breadth, the height and 
depth of the joy it brings into our souls, into 
our homes, into our business, into our social 
relationships. If our life has in it no joy, if 
our religion has in it no joy, if our work has 
in it no joy, if our future has in it no joy, then 
whatever formalism we may call religion, it is 
not the religion of the Christ of Christmas; it 
is not the religion of the Book of God; it is 
not the religion that makes men and women 
meet to become companions of angels; it is 
not the religion that will reform the world. 



CHRISTMAS JOY 



237 



"Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands, 
The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands; 
Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn, 
Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born! 

With glad jubilations 

Bring hope to the nations! 
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun: 
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as oner 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



"The list of brave, free men 
Who dared to strive and do, 
Or fail and strive again 
As God inspired them to — 

The all-sacred list of them unrolls 
In such a galaxy of starry names 
As well makes noonday of the darkest night, 
And, glittering and leaping like glad flames, 

Each blazes there 
An individual splendor, though they fuse, and share 
One vast white purity of Christ-like light, — 
The light of love for all mankind.— See how 

It glitters now 
In Lincoln's name, and where 
The dazzling, chaste illumination blends 
With Garfield's and McKinley's, and so lends 

The sacred symbol there — 
That triple martyrdom of these who died 
For the love human which they sanctified." 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH* 



"David, after he had served his own generation by 
the will of God, fell on sleep." 



This sentence has been translated in three 
various ways, all of which are wonderfully 
significant. The words are rendered in the 
margin of our Bibles in a different way from 
what they are in the ordinary text, and they 
are given in a slightly varied fashion in the 
Revised Version. The difficulty in the matter 
of the translation lies with the phrase, "the 
will of God." With what part of the sen- 
tence are we to connect it? Does it belong 
to the generation or to the service or to the 
falling asleep? In all these connections the 
words express truths, truths that are generally 
accepted. 

The argument Paul is making when he 
uses these words is this: David served his gen- 

*Preached in the Third Presbyterian Church, Chicago, 
after the assassination of President McKinley, Sunday morn- 
ing, Sept. 15, 1901. 

16 241 



242 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



eration, he could only serve his generation, 
but Jesus Christ served all generations. 
There was no time limitation to His service. 
From Eden unto Calvary men looked for His 
coming, and lived in the hope of their ideal. 
From Calvary until to-day men have looked 
to this Christ of Bethlehem and Golgotha, 
and have shaped their plans for the best de- 
velopment of humanity after His. 

Paul makes this statement in such a way 
that it becomes a beautiful description of a 
good life. "David served his generation." 
This is not an epitaph written by some ful- 
some admirer, who hides all that may be in- 
competent or disgraceful in a man's history, 
and emblazons in marble or in bronze some 
incidental events characterized by ability and 
unselfishness. This is an epitaph by a man 
who appreciated both David's weakness and 
David's strength. 

This is not only an epitaph, it is a biogra- 
phy. It is a perfect biography. It is an 
ideal biography. "He served his genera- 
tion." What greater fact can be preserved 
of any man, what greater fact is preserved of 
any man, though the story of his life take vol- 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



243 



umes to tell? If the story has been worth the 
telling, it is condensed in this one phrase, 
"He served his generation." Greatness of 
life is revealed in the service of others. It 
was this characteristic in the life of David 
that made it worth remembering. It is this 
characteristic in the life of every true man 
makes it worth remembering. In the Old 
World, the words that expressed nobility were 
founded upon this conception of serving our 
generation. The word "king" meant the 
man who can. The man who could do some- 
thing others could not do, yet who was kin to 
the weakest under his direction, influenced by 
his enthusiasm, protected by his courage, and 
strengthened by his valor. The word "duke" 
meant the leader. The man who was in the 
front in the day of difficulty. The man who 
took the first place in the battle rank, and 
who knew best how to inspire others by his 
own neglect of danger. The word "earl" 
meant the elder, the older man. The man 
who had wisdom, whose wisdom had been 
used for the benefit, not of himself, but of the 
community, and who became recognized by 
those about him as a wise counselor, whose 



244 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



advice if followed meant social strength and 
national development. 

In this world of the West, we may not use 
these titles of Old World nobility, but the 
ideas are here. The man whose memory is 
treasured East or West is the man who has 
served other men unstintedly, who has served 
them with unselfish service, who has placed 
his talents and his abilities at the call of the 
greatest number of less talented and less able 
men and women. 

"He served his generation." It is his own 
generation a man must serve. We cannot 
serve the past. The past is dead. We can- 
not bring it back to life. It has made for 
itself its history, and we inherit from it many 
privileges and opportunities. All we have we 
owe to the past, and thankless heirs we often 
prove ourselves. No generation inherited 
such advantages as we enjoy, and yet we have 
not been worthy of our heritage. There is no 
way in which we can prove ourselves worthy 
except by serving our own generation. There 
are some who are always looking back and 
telling us that times are not as good as they 
were when they were young, whose whole 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 245 

hopes are buried in the years that are gone, 
who are always facing backward, and see only 
the good things of yesterday, the mist of 
memory having draped the evil things so that 
they do not glare with the same obtrusive 
glitter as the sins of to-day. It is not the 
man who worships the past who will be best 
able to work in the present, and accomplish 
most for his generation. There are others 
who are dreamers, mystic dreamers, who tell 
us that the future holds in it marvelous 
things, and that they are waiting for an ideal 
time when society will be transformed, self- 
ishness dead, politics pure, patriotism univer- 
sal. These dim dreamers die and do not 
attempt to make their own dreams realizable. 
Having their eyes fixed upon a coming but 
far-distant ideal, they prove themselves use- 
less to the present generation. 

To-day we mourn the death of one who 
served his generation. He placed at the dis- 
posal of the nation his time, tact, and talents. 
Unlike other men, who have spent their energies 
in this commonwealth to enrich themselves, he 
was willing to spend and be spent, that the 
nation might be strengthened and its prestige 
maintained. 



246 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



We may not always have looked at things 
from his standpoint; we may have disagreed 
with his principles; we may have been op- 
posed to his plans, but as a man among men, 
with a man's temptations, looking at things 
from his standpoint, it must be said by friend 
and foe that he served, in the way he believed 
best, his generation. His service was a life- 
long one. It began when he was but a youth. 
He served his generation as a soldier. The 
stories of his life have filled the press of the 
city, and need not be told in the pulpit. It is 
the moral of the life, not its incidents, we 
would recall. 

In all the public positions he occupied he 
served others. That is what his friends and his 
foes alike will tell you. He served others with 
an enthusiasm and an unselfish devotion, reck- 
less of consequences and regardless of personal 
gain. 

What this republic needs to make it a 
model nation is more men and women who 
are ready, in every position in life, to serve 
not themselves, but their fellows; citizens who 
will be willing to live, not that their passions 
may be gratified, their greed satisfied, and their 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



247 



memories held in reverence for a brief moment 
because of the millions they may leave behind 
them, but who are prepared to give the 
same strength of character, the same energy 
of will, the same devotion to duty that has 
made them great in commerce or in any other 
sphere, to the public service. Such men will 
make the nation great, strengthen its social 
relationships, elevate its national ideal, and 
make it what it ought to be, the true land of 
the free. 

"He served his generation." That is the 
biography, that is the epitaph of the departed 
President. He was neither an enthusiastic 
antiquarian who thought only of the days 
that were gone, and said they were better 
than these, nor an incompetent dreamer who 
refused to act until the nation was perfect, 
but a practical man who took our national 
difficulties as they arose, dealt with them with 
a prudence, a sincerity, and a tactfulness that 
has scarce ever been equaled in this republic. 

He is an ideal for us in so far as he served 
his generation. What are we doing for our 
generation? What have we done? Can it be 
said in any home it is the better for our living 



248 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



there? Can it be said of this city, with its 
vicious conditions, that are often magnified 
beyond all truth, that it is the better for our 
living here? What have we done to serve the 
home, the church, and the city? Have we 
tried to serve ourselves as many do? Has any 
one of us said, ''What can the generation do 
for me? I am here to make the most out of 
other men and women who are less able than 
I am, who have less forethought, less tact, 
less energy, and less health." It is such self- 
ish time-serving makes anarchists. If we had 
more men and women who in the home, the 
market, and the church were anxious to serve 
the city and the land that gave them birth or 
protection, we would have fewer of those who 
have developed a hatred of all national in- 
stitutions and a defiance of all social bonds. 

It is not necessary to be great in order to 
do good service. "A little child shall lead 
them." Many a baby has been buried in its 
little casket amid the sobbing of a broken- 
hearted mother, that has served its gener- 
ation well. It is not necessary we should be 
strong in health to serve our generation. 
Many an invalid, bound by weakness to a bed 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



249 



of pain, has by his faith and patience served 
his generation with wondrous usefulness, sent 
into many a life, bound by materialism, a 
gleam of spirituality, a ray of the light of God. 
It is not necessary we should be rich in order 
to serve our generation. Many a poverty- 
stricken man has spoken the word of encour- 
agement a down-trodden spirit needed. Many 
a poverty-stricken woman has proved to 
another the strong friend, the wise counselor, • 
and the sympathetic adviser in the moment of 
crucial difficulty. If we would be true men 
and women, if we would be great in the 
highest and best sense, then we, too, like the 
President who has left us, must serve our 
generation. 

A second rendering is: "He served the will 
of God," or, as our version puts it, "He 
served his generation by the will of God." 
Some will have it that Paul's main point was 
he served the will of God in his generation. 
Whether that be so or not, one point involved 
in the apostle's argument is that the man who 
serves his generation serves God, and the man 
who serves God cannot help serving his gen- 
eration. 



250 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



One of the difficulties we meet with in life 
is to serve our generation by the will of God. 
We think we could serve our friends better by 
flattering their weakness instead of stimulat- 
ing them to obey the will of God. We have 
fallen into a habit of medieval times and differ- 
entiate the service of our generation from the 
will of God. In the middle ages, the church 
built monasteries and nunneries, so that those 
who would serve the will of God could sep- 
arate themselves from ordinary men and 
women and live in isolated piety. We are 
not altogether quit of that idea. We have 
not yet realized that the only true worship is 
work for men. What does God care for 
our chants and our hymns and our prayers 
and our preaching? What are they to Him? 
All true worship is work that makes the world 
better. Worship is good in its place, when it 
helps you to work. God is not an Eastern 
potentate, like some sultan, who delights to 
sit at ease and hear petitions innumerable, 
songs sweet and melodious, preaching strong 
and sympathetic. God made this world to 
work out in it His plan of developing human- 
ity up to His ideal, Jesus Christ. You can 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



251 



only worship God aright when you serve your 
generation according to His will, when you 
have something to show in the home, in the 
church, in the business world that you did to 
help other men to struggle better with temp- 
tation, and to recognize that God is over all 
and in all and through all. 

The only use of religion is to enable us to 
serve our generation by the will of God. It is 
true God sends men who have special capabil- 
ities for prominent positions, but the ele- 
mental characteristic that makes them 
accomplish their work may be the character- 
istic of any average man, for it is their will- 
ingness to serve their generation according to 
the will of God. 

"There was a man sent from God," we 
sometimes say when we speak of the great 
men who have guided the world's history. 
"There was a man sent from God," and his 
name was Moses. He made a nation out of a 
mob of slaves, founded all law, and inspired 
all legislation. "There was a man sent from 
God;" his name was David. He consolidated 
the kingdom of Israel, and left to his son a 
position of great influence and unique power. 



252 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



"There was a man sent from God;" his name 
was Paul. He served his generation by shap- 
ing the theology of the Christian church and 
preaching Christ crucified throughout Asia 
and Europe. "There was a man sent from 
God," and his name was Augustine. When 
the world had drifted far from truth and puri- 
ty, he preached sincerity and faith, and trans- 
formed the ideals of his generation. "There 
was a man sent from God;" his name was 
Martin Luther. He was a crude, rough, 
strong character. The world was suffering 
from ecclesiastical tyranny. With the 
strength that was in him he broke the 
shackles and set Europe free. "There was a 
man sent from God;" his name was Washing- 
ton, and when the world felt heavily the 
tyranny of kings, he helped to shape this 
republic, and founded it on the glorious prin- 
ciple that all men were born equal. "There 
was a man sent from God;" his name was 
Abraham Lincoln. He broke the bonds of 
the slave, and so served his generation by the 
will of God. And who shall dare to say that 
when the republic cradled by Washing- 
ton and freed by Lincoln had reached to 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



253 



man's estate, and must needs take its place 
among the nations of the world, no longer as 
a child to be patronized, but as an equal to be 
consulted, there was not a man sent from 
God whose tact was unparalleled, who guided 
this nation through a great crisis, and in- 
creased its influence to an unprecedented 
degree with the sovereigns, the diplomatists, 
and the nations of Europe, and that man was 
William McKinley. He served his generation 
according to the will of God. We mourn his 
death, but we remember with satisfaction that 
from his boyhood he strove to serve the will 
of God. Like the rest of us, he made mis- 
takes. But we cannot judge a man by his 
mistakes. He looked at many things from a 
different standpoint from ours, and arrived at 
opposite conclusions, but according to his 
ability, temperament, and training, he served 
the will of God. 

This republic must needs be proud of its 
assassinated President. David could never 
have been elected president of the United 
States. His life contained such gross immor- 
alities that no party would dare to run him to- 
day for our chief magistracy. There is no ruler 



25-4 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



in Europe at this moment who could be elected 
president of the United States. There is no 
ruler in Europe at this moment whose private 
life and personal ability would stand the test 
of public criticism through which a president- 
elect must pass. We hear from foreigners of 
the decadent character of this land of the 
free, but let those who criticise examine their 
own condition. While we raise to our chief 
magistracy only men who have been true to 
their home, true to their wives, true to their 
principles, true to their God, we can smile at 
all criticisms cynics choose to bestow. ''He 
served the will of God." Even at the last, 
these words were on his lips, "the will of 
God." 

Some will have it that the phrase, "the will 
of God," has to do with the last part of the 
sentence. "He fell asleep according to the 
will of God." 

Here is a complete philosophy. The har- 
monizing of these three great enigmas, Life, 
Death, God. Notice the little word "after." 
It was not before he had served his generation 
nor during the service of his generation, but 
after he had finished the work given him to 
do "he fell on sleep." 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 255 



Man is immortal till his work is done. The 
assassin accomplished his object. But there 
was a higher power than his, Whose all-wise 
providence we cannot understand, and Who 
sees conclusions where we see only beginnings, 
and according to W T hom all things in heaven 
and in earth are guided. 

"He fell asleep according to the will of 
God." What sweeter description of depar- 
ture than this old English phrase, Fell on 
sleep!" It implies that there is no fear for 
the man who has served his generation 
according to the will of God. When we 
go to sleep, we go to sleep willingly, we go to 
sleep gladly, we go to sleep without the 
slightest expectation of an enemy. So the 
man who has served his generation according 
to the will of God falls on sleep. Sleep is a 
gentle thing. With it is associated serenity 
and peace. As gently as a baby closing its 
eyes in slumber in its mother's arms, so 
gently does the man who has served his gen- 
eration pass from earth. 

Not only so, but sleep is not forever. We 
fall asleep to wake again. We fall asleep to 
wake the better for our sleep, refreshed by its 



256 



AN IDEAL EPITAPH 



quiet, strengthened by its rest. As it is with 
nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep, so it is 
with that greater sleep into which our good 
President has passed. It is but the rest and 
refreshment that prefaces the glorious day- 
dawn when he shall awake and be satisfied 
with the likeness of that Lord whose will he 
did in serving his generation. 

"So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death — 
Thou go, not as the quarry slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon; but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



IT 



'Say not, because he did no wondrous deed, 

Amassed no worldly gain, 
Wrote no great book, revealed no hidden truth — 

Perchance he lived in vain. 

'For there was grief within a thousand hearts 

The hour he ceased to live; 
He held the love of women, and of men — 
Life has no more to give!" 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS* 



"And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding 
exceeding much, and largeness of heart even as the 
sand that is on the seashore." 



To-day we are not interested in the great- 
ness of the wisdom and understanding of 
Solomon but in the largeness of heart with 
which God endowed him. 

We have met to mourn the loss of one 
whose greatest characteristic was this same 
largeness of heart; and if God gave it to 
Solomon, shall we not say God gave it to 
William McKinley? 

"Largeness of heart even as the sand on 
the seashore." This is not a metaphor we 
would use in the West. It is a peculiarly 
Eastern hyperbole. The stretches of sand 
along the sea beach apparently endless, are 
alone sufficient to give the old historian's con- 
ception of true great-heartedness. 

♦Address delivered in the Third Presbyterian Church, 
Chicago, at a memorial service on the day of President 
McKinley s funeral, Thursday, Sept. 19, 1901. 

259 



260 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



Great-heartedness rules the world. It is not 
the men of talent we most admire. A man 
may be possessed of a great brain, he may be 
a good thinker, so correct in speech his sen- 
tences are crystalline, but with his clarity 
there may be coldness, the clearness and the 
coldness of the icicle. 

More than talent is needed in the men who 
guide the world. Some men have energy, 
energy intense, well controlled and rightly 
directed. They are restless in their activities, 
but they have not become leaders of men. 
Talent and energy, without heart, do not 
suffice to move the multitude. 

What this republic needs is large-hearted 
men, for that alone will counteract the heart- 
lessness of the millionaire and the heartless- 
ness of the anarchist. Heartlessness is not 
restricted to any particular condition in 
society. It seems, however, to belong spe- 
cially to its crest and its base. The secret that 
made William McKinley the hero of the mil- 
lionaire and of the mechanic, was his large- 
ness of heart. 

There have been great men who have been 
generous after a fashion, but their largeness 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



261 



of heart was not like the sand upon the sea- 
shore. The sand may be vast in its countless 
stretches, but each sand grain is very minute. 
Take the particles one by one. They are so 
small you scarce notice them alone, unless it 
be a tiny flashing piece of quartz or granite 
that glistens in the sunshine. The largeness 
of heart with which this old king was en- 
dowed, and with which this modern President 
was enriched was a largeness that manifested 
itself not in one or two isolated events, but 
pervaded the commonplaces of life with 
gratitude and made the trivialities of exist- 
ence glisten with generosity. 

Small-hearted men may do a great thing 
once. Some great occasion may develop in 
them a slumbering power. It gleams like a 
lightning flash, electrifying and astounding 
the world, but it dies again with the sudden- 
ness of its birth, and leaves their life as nar- 
row and as self-centered as before. It is a 
strong evidence of a true man when he digni- 
fies the commonplaces of every day with 
glory. The most selfish man may experience 
some tragic incident, nerve himself for the 
occasion, and make the one event stand out 



262 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



in all the splendor of unselfishness against 
a background of every-day greed. The 
strength of our assassinated President lay in 
this largeness of heart that glorified ordinary 
incidents every day. What has made him the 
best beloved of presidents? His thoughtful- 
ness. Thoughtfulness about the littles that 
make life glide smoothly. Thoughtfulness 
about any and all with whom he came in con- 
tact. Thoughtfulness that bestowed a rose 
upon an engineer, a photograph upon a 
domestic, a word of sympathy upon a secret- 
service man. 

The ruling spirit was strong in death. What 
men have been accustomed to do in private, at 
the last by some sudden experience often be- 
comes public. They may have screened their 
inner thoughts before from general gaze, but 
a trifling incident in their closing hours fre- 
quently exposes their inner character to the 
community. William McKinley's character- 
istic thoughtfulness for others, known well to 
his own home circle, was revealed to a startled 
nation by his conduct in the day of his calam- 
ity. The thoughtfulness he manifested, when 
struck by the assassin's bullet, for the wife he 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



263 



loved better than himself, for the fanatic who 
had striven to destroy him, for the exposition 
and the crowd whose program the assassin's 
bullet had disarranged, were characteristic of 
the man. Such thoughtfulness had marked 
every day of his ordinary life and prepared 
him to act his part naturally before the gaze 
of the world in a situation would have 
unnerved most men. 

"God gave him largeness of heart even as 
the sand that is on the seashore." The sand 
is strong. We do not expect it to be so. 
Each little grain is such a flimsy thing, the 
breath can blow it from the finger-tip, and it 
disappears. But the multitude of these little 
grains bulwark the continents. As Jeremiah 
says, "He hath placed the sand for the bound 
of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it can- 
not pass it; and though the waves thereof toss 
themselves, yet can they not prevail; though 
they roar, yet can they not pass over it." 
The sea can break down the crag, wear the 
rock, displace the hugest boulders man doth 
build into his breakwaters, but the sand keeps 
back the ocean waves, and they beat upon it 
only to break themselves into spray and foam. 



264 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



It has been said that, buried in it a few inches 
below the surface, an egg will not be broken 
by the stroke of the greatest billow the winds 
of ocean can create. 

William McKinley was a strong man, and 
his strength was heart-strength. He came to 
the presidency of this nation at a critical 
time. A strong man was needed. Commer- 
cial conditions were depressed. Financial 
conditions were upset. But he faced the situ- 
ation; faced it with a strong and generous 
heart; faced it so as to confirm his friends' 
faith in his wisdom; faced it so as to win 
many of his enemies to his policy, and to earn 
for himself the name of "The Great Harmo- 
nizer. ' ' 

A great-hearted man may be strong in peace 
who will fail in war. This man wished not 
war, but peace. He was ready to concede all 
that civilization could to uncivilized methods. 
War came in spite of his diplomacy. With 
caution and courage he directed the affairs of 
the country through the excitement of conflict 
and led the commonwealth to victory. 

It is the great-hearted man who can do the 
right thing to a vanquished foe. It is the 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



265 



little soul who wishes to crown himself with 
glory by crowing over the enemy at his feet. 
When Spain was defeated, it was the magna- 
nimity of William McKinley ended the strug- 
gle without undue humiliation to a proud and 
sensitive people. 

"Great-heartedness." It was his character- 
istic. By it he will be known in history. He 
was himself, and being himself, he was strong. 
Some men are imitators, and thereby lose 
their power. We want no veneered Wash- 
ington. We admire a man who will be him- 
self. Washington had his day. He cradled 
this republic in its infancy. But Washington, 
with his aristocratic conceptions of life, would 
not be our hero now. This commonwealth in 
its recent crisis needed a man who was in 
close touch with the common people, a man 
whose heart was large and whose feelings 
were deep. Such a leader we had in the 
martyr we have lost — William McKinley. 
"God gave him largeness of heart even as the 
sand on the seashore. ' ' 

We can best commemorate his great career 
by manifesting a similar character. His 
struggle from a lowly social station to great 



266 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



heights of influence ought to be an inspiration 
to every soul in this republic to dare to be 
true to themselves, true to their heart's best 
thought, true to their home's queen, true to 
their calling, and true to their God. 

"He gave him largeness of heart even as 
the sand on the seashore." We may not be 
endowed with such large-heartedness, thought- 
fulness, and strength, but unto every man 
God has entrusted a gift. What yours may 
be, I know not. Our departed President was 
not a genius. The gifts he had were the gifts 
of the common people. How does your life, 
with its narrowness, thoughtlessness, and 
weakness, dwindle into insignificance beside 
the life of this good man who has gone to be 
with the noble dead? How small you are in 
contrast with him. You have made yourself 
thus small, by limiting your soul, centering 
your thoughts on self, and being carried 
hither and thither by waves of sentiment or 
winds of emotion. 

"Largeness of heart." It was his. May it 
be ours. May the pattern he has left us of 
kindliness, thoughtfulness, and strength in- 
spire many men in this commonwealth to 



LARGE-HEARTEDNESS 



267 



endeavor to be like him, as he was like his 
Master, Jesus Christ, the Lord. 

"True worth is in being, not seeming — 
In doing each day that goes by 
Some little good — not in dreaming 
Of great things to do by and by; 
For whatever men say in their blindness, 
And spite of the fancies of youth, 
There is nothing so kingly as kindness, 
And nothing so royal as truth." 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



"Leaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 

And stars to set — but all, 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death." 



THE VALE OF TEARS* 



"Who passing through the valley of Baca make it 
a well." 



In the Vulgate the words ''valley of Baca" 
are rendered in Latin "vale of sorrow," or 
"valley of tears." The phrase ''vale of tears" 
has become a common one. Dore gave ex- 
pression to his conception of the poet's 
thought in his great picture wherein all 
classes and conditions of men and women are 
passing through a dry, parched, narrow gorge, 
manifesting by their attitudes and actions the 
depth of their hearts' sorrow. In Chicago, 
during the past week, we have been passing 
through this valley. It is but seldom such a 
great horror comes so close to our own 
homes, and begets so strongly in our hearts 
the feeling of pity. 

"Passing through the vale of tears." 

What valley the old poet referred to, we 

*Preached in the Third Presbyterian Church, Chicago, 
after the disastrous fire in the Iroquois Theater, Sunday eve- 
ning, Jan. 3. 1904. 

271 



272 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



cannot tell. There may have been some local 
allusion to a particular place where there was 
no water and no shelter, and through which 
men, women, and children anxious to go up 
to the Temple must needs pass. Many trav- 
elers have tried to identify the particular 
spot, but common interpretation has taken it 
out of the hands of the experts and made the 
verse applicable, not to any special locality, 
but to the experiences of pain and incidents 
of sorrow that come alike to all. 

"Passing through the valley of tears." 

There is a temptation to misapprehend 
strange providences. Such criticism has not 
been wanting in the present instance. There 
are those who sit in judgment upon their fel- 
lows as they pass through this dry, parched 
land. This is nothing new. Two hundred 
years ago Cotton Mather preached a sermon 
on great burnings. There had been a great 
fire in New England. He assigned as the 
cause the fact that the people wore such big 
wigs, and asserted the Almighty was visiting 
them in judgment for such foolishness. A 
great many of the Puritans of New England 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



273 



agreed with Cotton Mather's views. The 
same interpretation has been made again and 
again of the providences of God. If He 
sends a sorrow to me it is a trial, but when 
He sends a sorrow to my neighbor it is a judg- 
ment. My neighbor must have done some- 
thing wrong, and he deserves punishment. 
By such attempts to interpret the mysteries 
of Providence we become cynical, excuse our 
own iniquity, and pass sentence upon our 
fellows. Because the present sad calamity 
occurred in a theater, some people say it is a 
judgment. It might have occurred in a 
church. A good many churches in this city 
are not as fireproof as was the Iroquois 
Theater. Had it happened in a church, these 
critics who are so conversant with the pur- 
pose of the Almighty would have called it an 
accident. The absurdity of such a view is 
apparent. Yet such opinions are often ex- 
pressed by those who ought to know better. 
Some men think they can explain by such 
superficial reflections the mysteries of Divine 
Providence. 

A story is told that illustrates the absurdity 
of such conclusions. When Milton was an old 

18 



274 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



man and blind, Charles the Second went to 
visit him. Milton was one of those respon- 
sible for the beheadal of Charles the First. 
As the great poet sat outside his little home 
in the sunshine, the king said to him: "Do 
you not think your blindness and poverty 
a judgment of God upon you because 
you opposed my father?" Milton replied: 
"Not so, Your Majesty, for though I lost my 
sight, your father lost his head." Through 
the grim humor of the Puritan you see at 
once the absurdity of our attempting to pass 
sentence upon men and women whom God in 
His providence may see fit to perfect by some 
process of pain or sorrow. 

"Passing through the vale of tears." 

There is nothing so old as sorrow. There 
is nothing so new. It is as old as the race. 
Back as far as we can go, we find it. It is 
as new as to-night. The death-angel has 
touched some home and brought to a young 
heart for the first time the consciousness of 
the pain the shadow of death casts upon 
human joy. Sorrow retains a perpetual fresh- 
ness. The vale of tears is no incident of the 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



275 



yesterdays. It is an experience of the now. 
All men and women pass through it some 
time. Some are in it long and lonely. 
Others have a sharp, quick trip that in its 
very intensity of agony equals the years 
others have passed in similar sorrow. 

"Passing through the vale of tears make it 
a well." The thought of the old song is that 
even the worst providences of God have in 
them something good. In the most dire cir- 
cumstances of pain there is some alleviation, 
some cause for consolation, some secret com- 
fort. Looking at the valley of tears, where 
all is dry and parched, some say, "How can 
there be any good there? How can you do 
good there? How can you get good there? 
Leave it as quickly as you can." But men 
and women are so bound in by circum- 
stances they cannot leave the valley of tears 
when they choose. The poet says we need not 
leave it to be blessed, for even in the valley 
where there is no sign of rain, and no evi- 
dence of a spring, we can cut a well in the 
rock. The cynic says: "Why waste your 
strength thus uselessly? There is no water. 
The sky is as brass. The soil is sand. The 



276 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



rock is dry." The old singer replies: "Dig 
your well. The sky may be cloudless and the 
soil ever so parched. Dig your well. God 
will send the rain." There maybe no sign 
in the sky; no evidence of a spring beneath; 
but God commands every soul in the valley 
of tears to dig in faith and hope, believing 
that from somewhere shall come waters of 
refreshment, showers of consolation, and com- 
fort abounding. 

Digging a well means work. We can best 
bear our sorrow by being active, by doing 
sometning. Activity in the right direction is 
the best alleviation of pain, even in the valley 
of tears. 

If we dig a well we do something that will 
not merely relieve our own sorrow for a 
while. A well when dug satisfies more than 
one man's thirst. We dig a well in the valley 
of tears and it becomes a center around which 
others who have similar sorrows can gather 
and be refreshed. The same well where our 
sorrow-burdened and saddened souls have 
found their best and purest solace may 
become a source of satisfaction to others. 
The valley of tears may be made the valley 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



277 



of refreshment. Sorrow fits us to become the 
best comforters of sorrow. Those who have 
themselves passed through this valley are best 
prepared to help those who for the first time 
journey through its dry and depressing atmos- 
phere. 

What comfort can there be in such a dire 
calamity as that of last Wednesday? Is God 
careless? Was He not thinking? Were our 
lives more valuable than those in the Iroquois 
Theater, that we should be spared and they 
should be suddenly snatched away? This is a 
great problem. But is not God always doing 
things like this? It is but a short time since 
Mont Pelee swept away far more lives in its 
lava flood. The calamity moved us less 
because it was not so near our own door. 
Why is God every now and then allowing 
these terrible things? Does He not care? Is 
the revelation of Him as love a mistake? Is 
there no comfort for the sorrowing in such a 
valley of tears as this? The difficulty lies 
with us rather than with God. There are 
worse things than death. There are more 
than seven hundred homes in Chicago to-night 
mourning, not for friends who were de- 



278 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



stroyed in that fateful theater, but for 
loved ones who would be better dead, chil- 
dren who have indulged in disgraceful immor- 
alities, broken a mother's heart, and whitened 
a father's hair. These moral calamities are 
about us and abound. The destruction of a 
man's soul is worse than the destruction of a 
man's body, yet we are not astounded by 
these sad calamities of every-day life. We pray 
our prayers and sing our hymns amid these 
moral catastrophes as if the world swung on 
right peacefully. There are some worse 
things in this city that have not touched our 
hearts as they ought, than even such a sudden 
blast of death as that which swept across the 
crowded theater. 

God may be reminding us by such a provi- 
dence that He does not care for the body 
so much as the soul. We in this city are liv- 
ing for our bodies. We are straining every 
nerve and spending every energy that we may 
feed the body with more than is good for it, 
and drape it with more than is needful, either 
for usefulness or beauty. The body is the 
beginning and end of our thought from early 
morn till late at night. God may send such 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



279 



providences, ever-recurring, into human lives 
to teach them that the body is not all. The 
body has a place, but a subordinate place, in 
this universe. Though the body crinkle 
beneath the flame, no blaze can touch the 
thing that loves, and the thing that loves is 
the thing that lives. Even in death how we 
care for our bodies, as if we would fight the 
divine decree with the old Egyptian theory, 
that the longer we could keep the body intact 
the surer we were of immortality. God every 
now and then lets loose some force that 
destroys the body beyond recognition, it may 
be to compel human attention to the consider- 
ation that the body is not the soul, and that 
the soul is what He values most. The soul is, 
therefore, what we need to consider and culti- 
vate. 

This may not be a complete answer to the 
problem raised by such a sad calamity. 
There is no complete answer. It seems to 
me, however, that the explanation of such 
providences may be evolved along these lines. 
Reason sufficient for such providential inter- 
ference in mysterious ways with men's move- 
ments can be found in these directions, 



280 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



We blame Providence for things with 
which Providence has very little to do. This 
city was burned once. Providence was 
blamed. Every man for ten years before 
who had built a wooden house had been 
contributing his share toward the eventual 
conflagration. The same thing is true now. 
Providence was not responsible for an asbestos 
curtain that was cheap and burned. Provi- 
dence was not responsible for doors that were 
bolted and barred. Providence was not re- 
sponsible for inattention to the various 
intricate arrangements associated with the 
presentation of the play. We are loading 
upon Providence our own neglect. Whose 
neglect? That is the question. Whose neglect? 
How did this thing happen? Simply because 
men were so greedy for money they were 
willing to take the risk of imperiling innocent 
lives. Who shall we blame? We are all 
greedy for money, and because we are so, we 
will not discharge our duty as citizens, and 
see that our city is properly represented, and 
her offices properly manned. There is no 
use blaming officials for which we are 
responsible, officials whom we either helped 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



281 



to elect, or else, by refusing to do anything, 
allowed to be elected. The whole trouble 
comes home to ourselves. We delight to find 
a scapegoat on whom we can unload our 
responsibility. But our own greed which 
prevented our action makes us as much liable 
as those more directly concerned. 

God allows incidents of this kind that He 
may arouse society to a recognition of its 
duty. The innocent have frequently suf- 
fered because a community failed to dis- 
charge their duties. Charles the First was 
not by any means the worst of the Stuart 
kings, though he was beheaded, and by his 
beheadal the despotism of the feudal ages was 
destroyed. Louis the Sixteenth of France 
was not by any means the worst monarch of 
the Bourbon race, yet he was guillotined 
because of social carelessness. Again and 
again incidents like this have occurred by 
which society has been waked by a sudden 
shock of sorrow to a conception of its com- 
plicity in crime, a realization of its duty, and 
a consciousness of its power. If a calamity 
such as this compels us as citizens of this city 
to see that our municipality is properly gov^ 



282 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



erned, life protected, and ordinances adopted 
after due discussion enforced, then this holo- 
caust will not have been in vain. We will 
have dug a well for men, women, and children 
to drink from forever hereafter while our city 
stands, though it has been dug in a valley of 
tears so parched and shelterless as that 
through which we pass to-day. 

There are other thoughts come at such 
a time, and other reasons one might raise in 
connection with such an impressive incident. 
Suffice it if, passing through this vale of tears, 
we are stimulated by our experience to be 
more active as citizens for our city's purity; 
then we shall contribute, not only toward our 
own security, but toward the security of those 
who shall come after us and enter into the 
heritage we leave. 

Our fathers fought for their rights and 
obtained them. We received them without 
shedding a drop of blood. Rights bring 
duties. We have been anxious to stand upon 
our rights. We have turned our backs upon 
our duties. No individual, no city, no nation, 
no race, can last that in its demand for rights 
forgets its duties. If in passing through this 



THE VALE OF TEARS 



283 



valley of tears we become so active as to dig 
a well the water whereof shall restore to as 
our lost consciousness of duty, then this visit- 
ation has done something it was worth even 
a God's while to do — waked up the average 
Chicago man to the consciousness of his duty 
to God, his duty to the state, his duty to the 
city, and his duty to his fellow. 

"In the days of old, 
In the dark bosom of the earth they laid 

Far more than we — for loftier faith is ours! 
Their gems were lost in ashes — yet they made 

The grave a place of beauty and of flowers, 
With fragrant wreaths, and summer boughs array'd, 
And lovely sculpture gleaming through the shade. 

"Is it for us a darker gloom to shed 

O'er its dim precincts? — do we not entrust 
But for a time its chambers with our dead, 
And strew immortal seed upon the dust? 
Why should we dwell on that which lies beneath, 
When living light hath touch'd the brow of death?" 



/ 



HAGAR'S VISION 



"Give me, O God, to sing that thought, 
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith, 
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld, withhold 
not from us 

Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, 
Health, peace, salvation universal. Is it a dream? 
Nay, but the lack of it a dream, 
And failing it life's lore a dream, 
And all the world a dream." 



HAGAR'S VISION 



"Thou God seest me." 



These words touch several of the great 
problems of life. There are certain terms 
popular in the present age, and sometimes 
superficial thinkers and superficial readers 
imagine the ideas they express are new and 
belong only to this generation. If we ex- 
amine their derivation and their history we 
generally find they express universal princi- 
ples more or less understood almost from the 
beginning of the race. Hagar here refers to 
three questions frequently discussed in these 
days. The first is personality. The second 
is reality. The third is immanence. These 
are very learned words compared with the 
simple statement of Hagar, "Thou God seest 
me." These philosophical terms you will 
find in the newspapers every day as if they 
expressed something entirely new. You will 
even find psychologists and scientists discuss- 
287 



288 



hagar's vision 



ing these subjects as if they specially 
belonged to the discoverers, investigators, 
thinkers, and writers of the present genera- 
tion. 

The first thing Hagar realizes and expresses 
in her brief, pointed way is that there is a per- 
sonal God, who has to deal with a personal 
Hagar. "Thou and me." Our conception 
of personality can go no farther than that. 
All that has been said and all that has been 
written since this prehistoric time has not 
made the question a bit simpler than Hagar 
makes it when she says, "Thou God seest 
me." There is a personality yonder, every- 
where. There is a personality here. He is 
like me in that he is a person. I am like him 
in that I am a person. He sees me and I see 
him. 

This thought of Hagar was a great thought. 
Hagar was a slave girl who had run away 
from her mistress. If there was anybody she 
did not want to have anything to do with it 
was the God her mistress worshiped. With 
the gods of her home land, Egypt, she might 
have had something in common. With the 
gods of the land in which Abraham sojourned 



hagar's vision 289 

she might have had some sympathy. The 
God of her mistress, the mistress who had 
driven her from home by her harsh treat- 
ment, was the very last deity Hagar desired 
to see or to know. It was, therefore, no wish 
on Hagar's part which led to this conscious- 
ness that there was a God who saw her, a 
slave girl, in the wilderness. 

The place where Hagar found God was a 
lonely place. There was no one else near. 
She had gone into the wilderness, directing 
her steps toward her home land. Maybe she 
had the expectation she would be picked up 
by some wandering Arabs, or by some caravan 
passing toward Egypt with merchandise. 
She found herself all alone in the wilderness. 
Nobody was near her. None of her expecta- 
tions were fulfilled. It was in this condition 
of hopelessness and helplessness that she 
became conscious of a personal God who 
knew a personal Hagar. It is through such 
experiences we come to know God to-day. 
We may believe in God as a theory. We 
cannot build up any rational scheme of the 
universe without a creator. We may call 
him force, or the unknowable, or any other 

19 



290 



hagar 's vision 



name that is sufficiently fantastic or philo- 
sophical. We can admit and accept all theo- 
retical deities, and yet obtain but little 
satisfaction. When we find ourselves in a 
lonely place, in some wilderness of pain, in 
some great desert of sorrow, we become con- 
scious, as this slave girl in her flight, that our 
position is hopeless and helpless, and in our 
hopelessness and helplessness discover the 
need of a personal God. Thereafter Deity is 
to us no longer a theory, but a personality, 
whom we see, hear, feel, and love. 

More, this great Being who has made every- 
thing thinks it worth His while to take care of 
a runaway slave girl. She was of little con- 
sequence to anybody. The unique feature to 
Hagar was, that the great Jehovah took an 
interest even in her. Though the Heaven of 
heavens could not contain Him, and He was 
surrounded with all the splendor and grandeur 
of His works, yet He had a personal interest 
in this unimportant and valueless individual 
called Hagar. She had no money. She had 
no friends. She had nothing under heaven. 
Yet she was of sufficient value to this God, 
this great Jehovah, for Him to notice her 



HAGAR S VISION 



291 



need. That was what amazed Hagar. 
4 'Thou God seest me," even me, Hagar, the 
slave, the runaway slave, of no value to any- 
body. Slaves in the time of Abraham were 
not of much account. They received scant 
consideration, little mercy and no pity. They 
were punished if they committed the slightest 
indiscretion. They were driven in every 
direction. They were slain without compunc- 
tion. They were of no value except in so far 
as they could work for their respective 
masters. When, in the history of the race, a 
human life was valued least, Jehovah revealed 
Himself as thinking of a slave. 

Hagar here discovers God. So must we all. 
I cannot discover God for you, nor you for 
me. You must find him for yourself as Hagar 
found him. No reading, no thinking, no 
preaching will enable you to discover God. 
It is a personal experience of the soul. You 
may prove by logic His necessity, by philos- 
ophy His importance. All that is of no avail 
until you have Hagar's experience and feel 
that God is with you of a truth, that you 
know him as you know no other soul, as you 
know not even your own soul. 



292 



hagar's vision 



There is in these words a discovery of hope. 
"Thou God seest me." Hagar feels, if God 
sees me, a slave girl, there is some hope for 
me, there is something to live for. He sees 
me just as I am. There is reality in God's 
vision. My mistress did not see me as I was, 
and she treated me meanly. My master did 
not see me as I was, and he did not treat me 
well in turning me over to the authority of his 
jealous wife. Thou God seest me as neither 
Abraham nor Sarah saw me. Thou seest me 
as I am, in all my helplessness and hopeless- 
ness. I see Thee and Thou seest me. Here 
is reality. It is a real God Hagar sees. It is 
the real Hagar God sees. So we do not see 
each other. We see a conventional person- 
ality who conforms to the customs of polite 
society and hides much selfishness beneath 
apparent generosity or much kindliness of 
spirit beneath a rude, gruff manner. We can- 
not see each other as we really are. We 
become accustomed to acting a part. We are 
insincere in our compliments and in our con- 
ventional expressions of sorrow. Our own 
insincerity begets the idea that everybody is 
insincere, and thus the whole world becomes 



hagar's vision 



293 



unreal. Because love, faith, and hope are so 
little in our own heart, we gradually assume 
there are just as little in the hearts of others. 
Therefore we need to come close to absolute 
reality. We must have a God whom we can 
see and who sees us. In his presence all con- 
ventionalities are swept aside. We feel He is 
not looking at the superficial person whom 
some praise and others condemn for some- 
thing they never thought, something they 
never said, or something they never did, but 
at the real me, and sees in me all there is. 

More, God is looking at the real me, not to 
find the bad that is there. It is not hard to 
find it. Anybody can find what is bad in me. 
What I need is neither a man nor a God to find 
my bad points, but a personality with sympa- 
thetic insight who can look behind them all 
and find amid them all what little good there 
is. The great characteristic of God's vision 
of a human soul is that even in the worst he 
seems to see something good. Here was 
Hagar. She was everything that was bad 
according to the conception of her time: a 
slave that had fled from her mistress, who 
deserved to be slain by whoever caught her. 



294 



hagar's vision 



Yet in this fugitive slave God saw good. The 
vision of Himself begat in her despairing heart 
hope of betterment, and from thenceforth 
Hagar was changed. God, when we see Him, 
begets in our hearts hope. We discover 
through Him that there is something worth 
living for. We may have no friends and no 
money. There may be nothing for us, appar- 
ently, but the wilderness of loneliness. The 
consciousness of a God who loves me 'enables 
me to live a lonely life, and live it well. The 
great philosophic teachers of Rome told their 
students that they ought always to remember 
that some great Roman was looking at them 
all the time. They assured them that if they 
could preserve the consciousness that the eyes 
of a patriot like Cato were upon them, they 
would never do anything unbecoming a 
Roman citizen, and their lives would be ideal 
in beauty and strength, sincerity and great- 
ness. But if it was the conception of a 
Roman philosopher that the consciousness of 
the presence of a Cato could make a man 
true, pure, brave, and noble, shall not the 
consciousness of God, of His presence, of His 
encouraging eye, be a stimulus to beget hope 



hagar's vision 



295 



in human hearts grander than any patriot ever 
inspired or any ideal statesman ever orig- 
inated. 

"Thou God seest me" was to Hagar not 
only the discovery of God and the discovery 
of hope; it was also the discovery of duty. 
When we find God we often find our tasks. 
Then we know they are God-appointed tasks 
and we face them with a new motive. What 
before we would not attempt because we had 
no incentive strong enough to impel us to 
accomplishment, we are now able to do with 
ease. 4 'Thou God seest me." Therefore 
Hagar had to go back to her mistress. It was 
a hard thing to do. She knew what she had 
suffered. Going back after having run away, 
she was likely to suffer still more. She was 
sure to be taunted with the fact that she had 
fled. But when Hagar had seen God she was 
able to go back and live where she could not 
live before, and endure all the abuse and 
jealousy of her mistress. We have duties to 
do that are as hard for us as for this slave girl 
to return and serve a jealous mistress. We 
often flee from our tasks. We become so 
wearied with them, so wearied by them, we 



296 



hagar's vision 



run away and leave them undone. The only- 
thing that will enable us to return, take them 
up again and do them, is the consciousness of 
God, a vision of His presence, of His inspir- 
ing help, of His gladsome glance, of His pleas- 
ure in seeing us do a difficult task well. 
Nothing will inspire any soul to discharge a 
duty that is hard to do so much as the con- 
sciousness that by doing it some one who 
loves them will be gladdened at heart. For a 
mother, for a wife, for a friend, men are often 
willing to face duties that are most distasteful 
and do them, and do them well. God loves 
us better than mother, or husband, or wife, or 
child. The feeling that the task is under- 
taken for Him and that He is looking on, will 
enable any soul to do whatever duty He calls 
him to discharge, however difficult or how- 
ever dangerous it may be. 

These words of Hagar not only discovered 
to her God, hope, and duty; they also dis- 
covered to her sin. Trained in Egypt, she 
doubtless knew little about sin in the 
Abrahamic sense. Living with Sarah, per- 
haps she had not appreciated very much the 
distinction between moral and ritual trans- 



hagar's vision 



297 



gressions. Even in this age there are many 
persons who are very religious and whose 
word one cannot trust. It seems to be a com- 
mon characteristic of our human nature that 
the man or woman who is the most particular 
about ritual is the man or woman who has no 
conscience in the matter of truth. One of the 
great difficulties we have to overcome is the 
fact that religion in many cases has been 
divorced from morality. A man in some 
churches may be religious and not moral. 
Hagar's training did not tend to give her a 
very correct idea of sin. The vision of God, 
of a God who loved her, who was interested 
in the fugitive slave girl, begat in her a con- 
ception of holiness very different from that of 
ritual purity, a conception of holiness un- 
known in her Egyptian home. She saw sin 
as a thing the God who loved her hated, and 
because He hated it she would hate it, for He 
loved her in her loneliness and hopelessness, 
and whatever He hated she would hate for 
love of Him. 

This is a somewhat different view from that 
usually taken of these words. I have heard 
this statement used to illustrate God as a sort 



298 



hagar's vision 



of detective watching us all very closely lest 
we should do some wrong thing. The last 
thought, if the thought was present at all to 
Hagar, was the thought of sin. It was not 
sin that suggested these words to her. It was 
love, and hope, and duty. The feeling that 
when she thought nobody saw her, there was 
One who saw and sympathized; when she 
thought nobody cared, there was One who 
cared for her more than she cared for herself. 
Now she felt she could not go any place or do 
anything that would keep her away from this 
loving God who had loved her when she was 
most forlorn, who had cared for her when she 
was most forsaken, who, when all others had 
forgotten her, had remembered her in peace. 

4 'Thou God seest me." The words may 
become to us, as they were to Hagar, a revela- 
tion of sin, and beget in us the feeling that we 
should not sin, because God hates sin. That 
is the strongest motive to keep us from sin- 
ning. The great idea dominating the Chris- 
tian world to-day is the idea expressed in the 
phrase, "immanence of God." That means 
we cannot get away from God. He is in us. 
He is about us. He is immanent in things. 



hagar's vision 



299 



That was Hagar's idea. She did not know 
the big philosophic word "Immanence," but 
that is what she meant when she said, "Thou 
God seest me." She now knew God was 
with her of a truth, had been with her all the 
time, though she did not know it, would be 
with her all the days thereafter, comforting, 
strengthening, and guiding her. God's pres- 
ence would be to her the motive for hopeful- 
ness, the inspiration for duty, the power that 
would withhold her from sin. Children who 
do wrong when their parents are looking on 
we consider to be very bad children indeed. 
The consciousness that God, our Father, 
watches us all the time ought to be sufficient 
to keep us from doing what we know He who 
loves us better than all does not wish us to 
do. 

Have we seen God? If we have, then we 
will realize the pleasure and bliss of being 
God's children. Some one has said that if 
God can see us, then surely He can hear us. 
The consciousness that the Father who sees is 
the Father who hears, ought to give great 
satisfaction. If He sees us always, there is 
nothing we can tell Him that He does not 



300 



hagar's vision 



know already. If in the telling we do not tell 
our story straight, He can make it straight, 
because He has seen it all. If in asking we 
ask for what would not be good for us, He 
sees the past with its experiences, the present 
with its temptations, and the future with its 
possibilities, and, seeing it all, He will hear 
and answer in the way that is best for us, for 
He loves us better than we love ourselves. 

This conception of God is the happiest 
thought of the Christian religion. God made 
me for His own glory. What does that 
mean? He made me that I might do every- 
thing that would make me a complete man. 
If I am a complete man, I am a happy man. 
Therefore, everything I do that makes me 
better and stronger and happier glorifies God. 
He did not make me to destroy me, so that in 
destroying me He might show the glory of 
His strength. To make me for such a pur- 
pose would be the work of a fiend, neither of 
a man nor of a God. If a man makes a 
machine he likes to see it do its work, and do 
it well. The more perfectly the machine 
works, the more the maker is glorified. God 
made me. He desires to make me complete. 



hagar's vision 



301 



In my completeness I shall find happiness. 
He watches me, that He may help me to 
attain the ideal He has set for me. The con- 
sciousness of His watching is the greatest 
stimulus for me to be better and to do better. 
The God who loves me and sees me in all my 
sufferings and all my joys, in all my failures 
and all my successes, shall at last glory in His 
workmanship, find in my love His highest 
desire and in my life His holiest purpose. 

"I see the wrong that round me lies, 
I feel the guilt within, 
I hear with groan and travail-cries 
The world confess its sin. 

"Yet in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood, 
To one fixed trust my spirit clings, 
I know that God is good! 

"Not mine to look where cherubim 
And seraphs may not see, 
But nothing can be good in Him 
Which evil is in me. 

"The wrong that pains my soul below 
I dare not throne above, 
I know not of His hate — I know 
His goodness and His love. 



hagar's vision 



"I dimly guess from blessings known 
Of greater out of sight, 
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 
His judgments, too, are right. 

"I know not what the future hath 
Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 
His mercy underlies. 

"And so beside the silent sea 
I wait the muffled oar. 
No harm from Him can come to me 
On ocean or on shore. 

"I know not where His islands lift 
Their f ronded palms in air, 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care." 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



"They are the noblest benefits, and sink 
Deepest in man, of which, when he doth think, 
The memory delights him more, from whom, 
Than what he hath received." 

"God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame." 

"Ceasing to give, we cease to have: 
Such is the law of love." 

"Forever the sun is pouring its gold 

On a hundred worlds that beg and borrow; 
His warmth he squanders on summits cold, 

His wealth, on the homes of want and sorrow: 
To withhold his largess of precious light 
Is to bury himself in eternal night. 
To give 
Is to live." 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



"And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the 
leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having 
an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very pre- 
cious; and she brake the box and poured it on his head. 

"And there were some that had indignation within 
themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the oint- 
ment made? 

"For it might have been sold for more than three 
hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And 
they murmured against her. 

"And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? 
She hath wrought a good work on me. 

"For ye have the poor with you always, and when- 
soever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have 
not always. 

"She hath done what she could: she is come afore- 
hand to anoint my body to the burying. 

"Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel 
shall be preached throughout the whole world, this 
also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a 
memorial of her." 



There are two stories of the anointing of 
Jesus. This one and another in the Gospel 
according to Luke. They are very much 
alike. In both instances the name of the host 
who entertained was Simon. In both in- 

20 305 



306 A GIFT REMEMBERED 

stances a woman anointed the feet of Jesus. 
In both instances her action was criticised by 
those present. In both instances Jesus him- 
self defended what the woman did. But 
while there are these four features of resem- 
blance, there are other features of dissimi- 
larity. In the instances recorded by Luke, 
the name of the host was Simon the Pharisee; 
in this instance it is Simon the leper. In the 
one instance it was a nameless woman who 
anointed his feet; in this case it was Mary, 
the sister of Lazarus. In the one place 
Simon the Pharisee doubted, but Simon the 
leper seems to have believed. In the one 
instance the critics are unknown; in the other 
the leading critic was Judas. Thus, while the 
two incidents have several points of resem- 
blance, there are as many points in which 
they are unlike. In the record of Mark there 
are no names given. The incident is anony- 
mous. So it is in Matthew, also. But in 
John, the gospel written long after, when all 
reasons for keeping back the names of the 
principal actors had passed, they are given. 
John tells us it was Simon's house, it was 
Lazarus' sister Mary, Judas Iscariot, and so 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



307 



on. What, then, is the significance of this 
interesting incident recorded by three evangel- 
ists, and occupying a very prominent place in 
the life of our Lord? What lessons does it 
carry for us? Wherein is it set down as an 
example and an encouragement to our relig- 
ious activities? 

Let us look first at the gift of this woman 
Mary. It was an interesting and a peculiar 
gift. She brought an alabaster box of oint- 
ment, very precious. There is no word for 
box in the Greek. There is simply the word 
alabastron. It was customary for the Greeks 
and Romans to speak of the vases and flasks 
in which this precious nard was kept as ala- 
bastron, just as we speak now of a tumbler as 
a glass, though we originally meant by glass 
the substance of which the drinking cup was 
made. Alabastron was a soft kind of marble 
which yielded itself readily to a tool, and 
could be turned in a lathe, so that the flasks 
or vases were easily shaped. Glass was 
unknown, and this marble substance was the 
best then found to preserve all kinds of subtle 
perfumes that would escape through wood or 
any other material with which they were 



308 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



acquainted. This flask or vase of alabaster 
contained precious nard. It is called in our 
version spikenard. This is a mistranslation. 
The word means genuine nard. Nard was a 
sweet and subtle perfume brought from India, 
and used only by the very wealthy on great 
occasions. To-day we like perfumes, and 
spend much money upon them, but they do 
not occupy the same place in our western civ- 
ilization that they held in the society of the 
Orient. The eastern peoples not only loved 
the perfume for its smell, but it was rubbed 
on the skin and acted as a stimulant. It pro- 
duced a feeling of content on the face after it 
had been scorched by the burning sun and 
irritated by the dust. As it was with the 
face, so it was with the feet. The feet bound 
only in sandals were also exposed to sun and 
dust. They often became inflamed and irri- 
table. There was nothing brought such a 
soothing feeling and gave such pleasant satis- 
faction to a weary visitor as having face, 
head or feet bathed with some beautiful per- 
fume. Few could afford such an expensive 
luxury as this nard. It was so valuable this 
particular vaseful was worth three hundred 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



309 



pence. The figures give us little conception 
of its worth. But if you remember that an 
ordinary working man, whether as a mechanic 
or an agricultural laborer, could only earn a 
penny a day, you will be better able to esti- 
mate the value of this nard. Mary's little 
flaskful was worth a year's labor. Three 
hundred days' work it took to pay for it. Its 
value to-day, if we put it into dollars, would 
be whatever is the average wage-earning of a 
mechanic or a laborer for a whole year. This 
was the best perfume known, the most costly. 
It was in the best vessel known. Both vessel 
and perfume were the most valuable of the 
time. How it came into Mary's hands we 
do not know. It may have remained over 
after the precious perfumes used for the 
embalmment of the body of her brother 
Lazarus before it was deposited in the grave. 
That may have been how it came into her 
home. She kept it, a great treasure, until 
some opportunity would present itself for 
using it; perhaps in the embalming of some- 
body else's brother; perhaps in bestowing 
upon some one whose poverty was great the 
means whereby they might satisfy their desire 
to give to their dead the best they could, 



310 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



Such was the present she brought to the 
Lord, and she brought it herself. Jesus 
Christ accepted the best from this woman. 
He won't accept anything less from you or 
from me. We may give this, that, and the 
other, give it and grumble, and it is all 
wasted. He won't have it. He will only 
take the best. If we desire to give Him the 
best and have the joy that comes from giving 
the best, we must give it ourselves. This was 
a personal act to a personal Saviour. She 
didn't depute one of the servants to come and 
break this vase of ointment on the Master. 
She came and did it herself. Among the 
rulers and nobles it was customary to have 
some distinguished slave perform such a duty 
when the master was aweary. Mary does it 
herself, delegates to no other the privilege of 
doing this thing to the Lord she loves. We 
often get somebody else to do our good works 
for us. We pay somebody else to visit the 
sick in our stead. We pay somebody else to 
help the poor in our stead. We pay some- 
body else to speak for the Lord Jesus in our 
stead. By so doing we lose all the pleasure 
there is in giving Him personal service. 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



311 



Nothing we may do to supply a substitute will 
bring to our own souls the joy of doing some- 
thing for another living soul for the sake of 
the living Saviour. No conception of a dead 
Christ embalmed in a creed will beget in 
our hearts the glow of satisfaction the con- 
sciousness of having a live Christ by our side 
for whom we are willing to do anything, and 
to give anything, even to the best we have, 
will inspire. If you have had no joy in 
your religion it is right that you should not. 
You have preferred to pay somebody else to 
do the thing you ought to have done. No 
contact with deputies will make your shriv- 
eled heart glad. You must see for yourself 
the joy your gifts have brought, the pleasure 
your words have inspired. You must feel the 
heart-beat of a living soul you have helped 
give back its exultant heart-beat to your own. 

This woman did this thing herself, and gave 
the best she had. More, she did it in pub- 
lic. She wasn't ashamed of it. She did it on 
a great occasion. The three times Mary is 
mentioned in the New Testament we find her 
at the feet of Jesus. We first find her there as 
a scholar, learning the truth; we next find her 



312 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



there as a sorrower, weeping for her dead 
brother, and now we find her there as a loving 
admirer, giving him the best she had. Such 
is the ideal life that gets the most out of exist- 
ence, the life that looks to a living Jesus for 
the lessons of truth, the life that looks to a 
living Jesus for comfort in its sorrow, the 
life that gives to a living Jesus what it has to 
give of time and energy and wealth. It is 
because we have drawn an unreal distinction 
between Jesus himself and what we think and 
say and do that has led to our elimination of 
the greatest motive power for Christian aggres- 
siveness. If we sit at the foot of the pulpit 
to hear what the preacher has to say instead 
of waiting to hear what Jesus has to say 
through him, we miss the mark. We must 
realize that it is not the voice of the preacher, 
nor is it the dead page of a printed book, but 
the living truth of a living Lord to which we 
listen; only then will the great philosophy of 
the Gospel pulsate with a significance that 
must make it to us a present, powerful, living 
reality. In sorrow, when we weep beside our 
dead, much of the intensity of our agony is 
caused by the fact that we forget Christ lives 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



313 



and is with us, and that our loved ones are 
with Christ. The severance of our thought 
in sorrow from the consciousness of a present, 
personal Lord increases the pain of parting, 
and gives our agony a thousand-fold inten- 
sity. As it is with these things, so it is with 
our gifts. When we give, we give to the 
church, or we give to the man who asks us 
because that particular individual happens to 
ask us. We give so much because so and so 
gives so much. Thus we eliminate out of our 
giving the essential element of giving that 
makes it a joy to give, the consciousness that 
what we give is not given to an institution we 
call a church, is not given to a man who asks 
us, or a woman, either, no matter whom they 
may be, but is given to the living Christ 
whom we love, who stands beside us as we 
make the gift, who is as really present in our 
consciousness as those who take what we 
bestow. Until we can realize the presence of 
a living Christ who touches our personality, 
whether as a teacher, a comforter, or a re- 
ceiver of our gifts, we never can be happy 
in our religion, we never can suffer as love 
delights to suffer, we never can give as 
love delights to give. 



314 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



The motive of Mary's action was her affec- 
tion for Jesus. She doubtless was filled with 
gratitude. The fact that this Christ had 
raised her brother from the dead, and brought 
into her home, where all was sorrow and 
black despair, that brother back again, 
prompted this action. There was gratitude 
behind it, no doubt, but it was gratitude 
exalted into love. It was not duty. Did God 
command you and command me to give of our 
best in so many words, and we brought it 
because duty demanded it, there would be but 
little love in our action. There would be 
wanting the highest motive, the greatest 
cause for donation. Many of us give from 
duty. It is very hard work. We drag out 
our gifts with great difficulty. We are very 
loath to part with them. But it is the life- 
breath of love to give. When we love we are 
always thinking what our loved one likes best 
that we may give it if we can afford it. 
There lies the difference between the gift of 
duty and the gift of love. Had Mary read 
somewhere that it was the correct thing to 
pour a box of ointment upon Jesus' feet, it 
would have taken the whole heart out of her 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



815 



voluntary sacrifice. Its very originality added 
to its worth. Love is not governed by law. 
The only law it knows is this, to give the best 
it has to the beloved. Love will find some 
way of expressing the greatness of its affec- 
tion crystallized into a token bestowed on 
the beloved one. Duty often compels us to 
give. If so, our gift has lost the glorious 
aroma that makes it especially desirable. 

This woman's love-gift provoked criticism. 
The criticism is good, sound common sense. 
The critic says: "What is the use of spending 
a whole year's wages on perfume? It's 
absurd. It's ridiculous. Why, there are 
people starving here, right in the city. Think 
how many of them a year's wages would feed. 
This woman ought not to be encouraged in 
such extravagant waste." Isn't that good 
common sense? That is always what people 
say who are stingy. There is nothing so irri- 
tates a niggardly man as to bring him face to 
face with a generous one. But you never 
hear a mean man make a bad excuse for his 
parsimoniousness. He always has a good ex- 
cuse ready. Where could you find a better 
excuse than the poor? Nowhere. It was the 



316 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



best possible excuse. Yet it was an excuse 
prompted by penuriousness. The average 
excuse against doing this or that or giving this 
or that for Jesus is still made from the same 
motive, and some church-members are won- 
derfully ingenious in making these excuses. 

The critic here could not see the motive 
that prompted this gift. To Judas it was but 
waste. To Mary it was an honoring of Jesus 
by giving the best she had got. Jesus did not 
need it. It was not absolutely essential to 
the Master that she should spend a year's 
wages on Him in one sublime act of devotion. 
But it was necessary to her, though it was not 
necessary to Him. She felt she must do 
something to show how she loved her Lord. 
When He raised Lazarus she could not find 
words to express her joy. Now at the feast, 
perhaps a feast inaugurated to commemorate 
that marvelous resurrection from the dead, 
words fail her again. She must do some- 
thing. Love must express itself, and must ex- 
press itself worthily. It was not a question 
of usefulness. It was an absolute necessity 
for her in some way to show the Lord how 
she appreciated what He had done for her, 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



317 



The gijt the Master did not need. The gift 
would have been an embarrassment to an 
ordinary guest, making him the center of 
attention for the whole company by the mani- 
festation of such devotion and the diffusion of 
such an exquisite odor. Although it was not a 
necessity and almost an embarrassment, Mary 
was compelled to do it. So it is to-day with 
many men and women. The consciousness 
that Jesus Christ has done more for you than 
any other soul could do, the consciousness 
that He has not raised your brother from the 
dead, but that He has raised yourself from 
the dead, and made you alive by His own 
death, compels you to do something worth 
doing for His sake. The way in which 
your devotion manifests itself may not please 
the prudent and the critical. It may seem a 
waste of energy, a waste of time, a waste of 
money. But if the motive that makes you do 
it is the consciousness that Christ died to save 
you, that He loves you, that you love Him, 
and must find a way somehow of showing how 
much you love Him, then, whatever others 
may think, or however others may criticise, 
your own heart will have the glad conscious- 



318 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



ness that you have offered the best you had to 
the Lord who loves you. The critics could 
not understand the situation, neither can the 
majority of the church-members of to-day. 
They are always making plausible excuses. 
They cannot make a better one than Judas 
made. They never yet saw anybody make a 
gift to Christ, whatever shape it took, that 
they did not say something similar to what 
Judas said. Their criticism reveals the fact 
that they themselves have never known what 
it is to love the Lord Jesus Christ as true 
givers love Him and as this Mary loved Him 
for what He had done. 

A woman did this thing. It was much more 
difficult for a woman in those days to find any 
way wherein she could manifest her love for 
the Lord who had done so much for her home 
than it is to-day. Love is never baffled. 
Love always finds a way. If Mary, for the 
love of the Lord who raised her brother, was 
willing to brave public criticism and give her 
best, what ought the women of America to do 
who have inherited all their rights and liber- 
ties because of the gospel of this same Jesus? 
Women owe more to Christianity than men. 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



319 



And yet it is often among the women of 
America least sympathy is found for other 
women who realize what the Lord has done, 
and are willing to give their best, even their 
own selves, if need be, as a gift to their 
Saviour. 

Jesus commended Mary's act. She did 
more than she thought. She did not dream 
of His being buried in a day or two. She had 
no foreknowledge of the crucifixion. She did 
not know the Master's feelings at that partic- 
ular time. Yet she gave her gift just at the 
right moment. It was her opportunity. If 
she had allowed it to slip it never would have 
come back. She had anointed Him aforetime 
for His burial. How many of us have realized 
what we have lost by not being aforetime 
with our gifts. How many a loved one has 
gone out from us and we left something 
undone we might have done to gladden their 
heart. Now that they have left us, we only 
have the unsatisfactory memory that we 
missed our opportunity. Mary made her op- 
portunity. She was aforetime. She brought 
satisfaction to the Master's heart. The posi- 
tion of Jesus at that moment was peculiar. 



320 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



He was conscious that His death was being 
planned and was bound to come within the 
next few days. The men who were His dis- 
ciples, who had been His companions through 
all His ministry, seen His wondrous working, 
and appreciated His marvelous teaching, were 
with Him. Yet what of these men? Judas 
was about to betray Him. Peter was about 
to deny Him. They were all about to forsake 
Him and flee. Apparently there was not a 
single heart in the room that beat with sin- 
cere, true, trustful, changeless love for Him. 
He had never, perhaps, felt so lonely in all 
His life's struggle as at' that time. At the 
very moment when there seemed to be 
nobody willing to give their best for His sake, 
nobody who loved Him for Himself alone and 
not for the kingdom in which they hoped to 
rule, Mary glides into the room with this fra- 
grant flask of perfume and pours it upon His 
head. "You have wrought a work in me," 
He says. He feels that one soul loves Him. 
It may be only one. But in the one soul that 
loves Him well enough to give her best, He 
sees the promise of many souls that shall be 
willing to do the same in the days to come. 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



321 



One thing that helped to make this act so 
significant was its being done amid a group of 
grumblers. Grumbling grows. Judas seems 
to have been the first critic. But then they 
all began to complain. How good we are at 
complaining to-day. How ready to follow a 
grumbler. How much less ready to follow 
those who praise any manifestation of devout 
love to the Lord Jesus. Jesus found amid the 
critics one heart filled with affection for Him- 
self alone, affection so true and deep it was 
willing to give the best it had for His honor 
and glory. 

Mary did not think she was doing a great 

thing. She never dreamed she was the only 

one whose love was sincere, whose love had 

no expectation of earthly reward, whose love 

would remain true as long as she lived 

because of what Jesus had done for her. 

Jesus said to those around Him, "You can't 

appreciate this woman's love, but wherever 

this gospel is preached men will appreciate it. 

Her act may not be understood to-day by you 

grumbling critics, but I tell you that there is 

nowhere in this wide world that the story of 

the Gospel is told but men will admire what 
21 



322 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



she has done to-day." Such is the signifi- 
cance of the Master's statement. And it is so 
wherever this story of true love that gave its 
best to the loving Christ has been told, men 
have admired its unselfishness and some have 
been stimulated to attempt to repeat its 
beauty and sublimity. 

How shall it be with us? Have we done 
anything that we perhaps do not count as very 
much that the Master will call great? Mary 
did not understand how much she had done. 
The people who are always talking about 
what they have done, generally are not of 
much account, and what they did was not 
done from love to a living Jesus. Do ever so 
little from love to a living Jesus, and you shall 
find your little magnified as this woman's act 
was magnified into a cause of universal admi- 
ration. For when the Son of Man shall come 
in His glory, then shall He say, "Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you. For I was anhungered, 
and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye 
gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took 
me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, 
and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



323 



came unto me. ' ' Then shall the righteous say, 
"Lord, when saw we thee hungry or thirsty or 
lonely or sick or in prison?" They are amazed 
that the little things they did for love of Jesus 
have thus been magnified into deeds of 
supreme importance. Mary never dreamt 
that Jesus was sitting there longing for some 
one soul that loved Him for Himself alone. 
At the judgment, when she is appointed to her 
place, none shall be more surprised than Mary 
when the heart of the Master is revealed and 
the value of her gift to Him is shown. This 
is an encouragement for us. It is also a criti- 
cism of us. She did what she could. Have 
we? She did what she could. It seemed use- 
less to waste the perfume. But it was all she 
could do to show her love. She did it. The 
Master accepted it at its true value, and made 
herself and her act famous forever. What 
you can do I know not, but will the Master be 
able to say at that great day that you did 
what you could, did it, not for any institution, 
not because some one asked you that you 
respected, but did it because you loved Him- 
self, believing He died to save you from your 
sins, to make you happy here, to give you 



324 



A GIFT REMEMBERED 



hope for all the loved ones you had lost, to 
make your life worth living, and introduce 
into your aggressive activities in this world the 
consciousness of a blessed peace that no 
worry could destroy, and no tumult disperse. 

"Wouldst thou be happy? Give, then, give 
To those in need, 
That they in comfort, too, may live 
And bless thy deed. 

"All that thou hast the Lord has given, 
Thy life and health; 
Thy time and talents are from Heaven, 
And all thy wealth. 

"Still all thou hast is but a trust 
For God to use; 
To use and not allow to rust, 
Much less abuse. 

"What, therefore, thou wouldst do, do now; 
Do not delay; 
Record in Heaven a solemn vow, 
And give to-day. 

"E'en angels know no sweeter bliss 
Around the throne 
Than they who in earth's ministries 
Have kindness shown." 



PRAYERS 



"But that from us aught should ascend to Heav 
So prevalent as to concern the mind, 
O God, high blest, or to incline His will, 
Hard to belief may seem; yet this will prayer." 



PRAYERS 



ADORATION 

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, the 
whole earth is full of Thy glory. We recognize 
Thy greatness. We magnify Thy name. We 
realize Thy goodness. We praise Thee for 
Thy mercy and Thy love. Give unto us, we 
beseech Thee, the consciousness that Thou 
art here with us in Thine own house, and 
unto Thyself shall be the glory, through 
Christ. Amen. 

THANKSGIVING 

O God, our Creator, our Preserver, and our 
Saviour, we give Thee thanks for all Thy 
mercies and Thy grace. We thank Thee for 
life with all its blessings. We thank Thee for 
strength with all its joys. We thank Thee 
for home with all its comforts. We thank 
Thee for the Church with all its divine associ- 
ations. We pray Thee to grant unto us at 
this time the spirit of gratitude, so that we 
may in very truth express to Thee in thought 
327 



328 



PRAYERS 



and prayer and song the joy of thankful 
hearts. Be with us now, as Thou alone canst 
be, making our gratitude resolve itself not 
alone into the parts of this worship, but going 
with us from the worship of Thyself to the 
work of Thy world, so that throughout the 
week thanksgiving may permeate our acts, 
making them all ring true. Hear us and bless 
us in our thanksgiving. For Jesus' sake. 
Amen. 

CONFESSION 

O God, with whom is forgiveness that Thou 
mayest be feared, and plenteous redemption 
that Thou mayest be sought after, we come 
to Thee, conscious we need forgiveness, con- 
scious we need redemption. We would con- 
fess to Thee with shame our sin. It has been 
manifest in many things, yea, in almost all 
things. Even our holy things have been 
tainted with selfishness and our most sacred 
aspirations have been prompted by motives 
that will not bear the test of the purity of our 
God. We come to Thee, our Father, who 
alone can forgive, and with sincerity and sim- 
plicity we would make confession, We thank 



PRAYERS 



329 



Thee that when there was none other way to 
be forgiven, Thou wast pleased to give Thy 
Son Jesus to die that by His cross and sacrifice 
we might be able to approach Thee and 
receive from Thee the pardon needful to 
make us glad in this present world and give 
us hope of eternal blessedness in the world to 
come. Forgive us now for the sake of this 
same Jesus. Amen. 

INTERCESSION 

O Lord, we come to Thee with our re- 
quests. They are manifold. We need many 
things. Many things we need not we wish 
for. We bring to Thee our needs and our 
wishes, and pray Thee to satisfy what in them 
is good. Give unto us the gifts that shall 
enable us to be better and to do better in this 
world. 

We bring to Thee those who have sorrows, 
sorrows deep and sore. We pray Thee to 
comfort their hearts. Thou art the God of 
all comfort and Thou hast promised to give 
the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to those who 
come to Thee with the burden of their heart's 
pain for solace. 



330 



PRAYERS 



We pray Thee to be with those who are 
burdened with care, who have many things to 
think of, so numerous, so interesting, appar- 
ently so essential, their thoughts are entirely 
occupied therewith and their whole life has 
thereby been made a very weariness. O God, 
Thou carrier of the care of Thy people, give 
unto all such weary ones the power to cast 
their care upon Thyself. 

We bring to Thee those who are lonely and 
friendless; who have none in whom they can 
confide; who have been betrayed by those 
they trusted. We pray Thee to enable them 
to feel that, however false other friends may 
have been, they will find in Jesus the revela- 
tion of Thyself, a friend who is changeless and 
true, a friend who sticketh closer than a 
brother; a friend who never forsaketh and 
never forgetteth. We pray Thee to give unto 
them the faith and confidence that will enable 
them to tell the tale of their betrayal, the 
burden of their life's loneliness, in Thine own 
ear. May they realize the comfort that 
comes from confiding. May they be con- 
scious, as in Thy house they pray, that Thou 
thyself dost listen to what they have to tell of 
sorrow and shame and sin and broken faith. 



PRAYERS 



331 



We pray Thee to grant strength to those 
who need Thine aid to face the world's work. 
Its difficulties are great. Its dangers threaten. 
Its temptations abound. O God, may they 
receive help from Thee alone, who art the 
strong One. May they go forth into the 
world to meet all its wrong and evil, fitted for 
their place by Thyself. May they be the 
stronger for their conflict. May they be con- 
scious of the development of their spiritual 
might in their battle with all that is evil. 

We pray Thee to grant Thy blessing upon 
Thy Church in this world, and upon all her 
agencies at home for the benefit of the nation. 

We pray Thee to grant Thy blessing upon 
the Church in the world abroad, where she 
carrieth the message of the Master to the ears 
of heathendom and paganism. May the mes- 
sengers know they have the support of the 
Spirit. May they know the Church prayeth 
for them. May the consciousness that the 
prayers of the people at home ascend in their 
behalf nerve the missionaries of the cross to 
deeds of greater daring, and works of greater 
devotion in the cause of their Christ and ours. 

Bless the world itself, the world that Thou 



332 



PRAYERS 



hast made, the world for which Thy Son did 
die. Hasten the time when all men therein 
shall hear the story of Thy love; when hearts 
shall be free from sin; when habits of wrongs 
shall be broken; when righteousness shall 
reign triumphant, and purity and holiness 
shall be known from pole to pole. 

Grant Thy blessing especially upon this 
nation. Be with the President of these 
United States in his high position. May Thy 
spirit endow him with power so that he may 
be enabled to accomplish the purpose of his 
destiny in the place where it has pleased Thee 
to place him. Grant unto him, we beseech 
Thee, wise counselors, so that the affairs of 
this nation may be guided for the establish- 
ment of righteousness and for the benefit of 
the world. 

Hear us now, as we pray in the short and 
simple words Thy Son taught His disciples 
long ago: Our Father, which art in Heaven, 
hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, 
Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive 
us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and 
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us 



PRAYERS 



333 



from evil, for Thine is the kingdom and the 
power and the glory forever. Amen. 

FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT 

Holy Father, we thank Thee for the blessed 
Book in which Thou hast made known to us 
the things that concern Thyself and the 
things that concern ourselves. We thank 
Thee that with the Book Thou hast given us a 
blessed interpreter. We beseech Thee to 
grant us the Holy Spirit now to help us to 
understand the revelation He inspired. May 
He bring home to our hearts and consciences 
the meaning of its gracious words. May He 
impress them upon our memories. May He 
make them part of our lives. May we carry 
the truth they teach into our homes and into 
our work, and prove ourselves to be followers 
of Jesus Christ, the Lord. All we ask is in 
the Master's name. Amen. 

FOR ACCEPTANCE OF THE OFFERING 

Giver of every good and perfect gift, we 
come into Thy courts as did Thy saints of 
olden time, with an offering. Accept, we 
beseech Thee, of the gift we devote to Thee. 



334 



PRAYERS 



Bless all who have given as they ought. May 
Thy precious promises be fulfilled unto them. 
Take what we here present and use it so that 
hearts may be comforted, homes brightened, 
and this community blessed. For the 
Saviour's sake. Amen. 

FOR BLESSING 

Father, bless our meditation. Give unto 
us, we beseech Thee, the power of the Spirit, 
so that we may be enabled to bear witness to 
the love of Jesus, and help to win the world 
for Him. Make us faithful in our work. 
Make us simple in our witnessing. Wherever 
we go, may men know by the purity of our 
life, the joy of our countenance, and the love 
of our heart, we, indeed, have been with Jesus 
and received from Him the gift of gifts, His 
own Holy Spirit. 

Bless this congregation. May we as a con- 
gregation realize our duty. May we hold 
forth the word of life. May the story of our 
activities lead others to the Christ who hath 
made us pure in motive, holy in life, and 
sincere in work. Grant, we beseech Thee, 
that each individual member may grow in 



PRAYERS 



335 



grace from day to day, until one by one we 
are brought to that perfection which maketh 
us meet for the inheritance of the saints in 
light. 

Have mercy upon those who know nothing 
of the love of Jesus, who know nothing of the 
Holy Spirit, who know nothing of Thee as 
God, the Father. May the good Spirit with 
power touch their hearts now, so that they 
may feel that Thou dost love them; so that 
they may know Jesus died for them; so that 
they may leave this house loving Thee. May 
some lives be transformed this day by Thy 
love, so that where they once were sad with a 
sadness that grew deeper with the years, they 
may be glad with a gladness that shall in- 
crease until it mergeth in the joy of Thy 
heavenly home. Hear us and bless us for the 
Lord Christ's sake. Amen. 

"Give me, O Father, to Thy throne access, 
Unshaken seat of endless happiness! 
Give me, unveiled, the source of good to see! 
Give me Thy light, and fix mine eyes on Thee." 





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